by Liv Rancourt
Right before noon, she parked the Mini up the hill from Cutters and dashed through the rain to join the lunch crowd.
Maeve stood in the lobby, arms crossed, bright coral nails popping against the forest green wool scarf wrapped around her shoulders. “They said there’d be a ten-minute wait.”
“That’s fine.” Danielle couldn’t find anything else to say, so she counted hexagonal tiles on the floor, feeling like she’d raced outside naked and lost her keys. A thought slid across her mind; she could tell Maeve about Ryan and deal with the side effects. Maeve hadn’t been happy to hear about them dating, and who knew how she’d respond to hearing they broke up. Danielle would have to throw those dice at some point. Maybe this was a good time. It would be her penance. Sort of like going to confession, without the Catholic part.
Or she could do her best to get through lunch without losing her best friend, too.
“What’d you do this weekend?” Maeve asked.
Spent the whole time curled up in bed. “Not much.”
Another awkward silence built, and Danielle shoved her work-shredded fingernails in the pockets of her down jacket. She used to be as pulled-together as Maeve, before she’d launched her life to Mars.
What the hell happened?
They made two more conversational false-starts before the hostess seated them at a table with a view of the water. Or rather, a view of the mist and low-hanging clouds hiding everything but the boats tied up on the dock nearest to them, which stood out black and clear against the soggy pewter backdrop.
Maeve chased the hostess off with a you-can-pour-water-later frown. “Did you hear what happened New Year’s Eve?”
Danielle slow-blinked to clear the image of Ryan pinning her to the bed. “No.”
Tossing her scarf over the nearest chair, Maeve gave Danielle a catty grin. “Fucking Cherry.” A soft shadow of hurt fell over her eyes. “About one-thirty I caught her in the bathroom with Jason. He was straddling the toilet and she was straddling him.”
Danielle applied every ounce of control she possessed to keep her expression neutral. “No way.”
“Right?” Maeve planted her elbows on the table, fists clenched, jaw tight, pride stung. “All these years we’ve been friends, and she totally plays the slut card right in front of poor Ryan.” She smacked the table. “If she goes near him again, I’ll rip her tits off.”
“Mm-hmm.” The conversation definitely wasn’t helping Danielle’s appetite. Though Maeve might not have been seriously interested in Jason, friends didn’t do that kind of thing to each other. Nevertheless, trash-talking Cherry could very well come back to nibble on Danielle’s ass. She swallowed a couple variations of Gee, I’m so not surprised and tapped her fork against her knife, desperate to change the subject.
The hostess helped her out by showing up with the water, accomplishing her mission despite Maeve’s go-away glare, and the waitress showed up right on the hostess’s heels, further delaying their conversation. Danielle asked for the Thai chicken salad and a glass of iced tea. Maeve took a long hard look at the wine list but ordered iced tea also. Danielle was too much of a nurse not to notice the tremor in Maeve’s elegant fingers. She knew a red flag when she saw one.
Maeve leaned forward, keeping her voice pitched low like they were discussing a threat to national security. “And Ryan’s going nuts, too. I heard from a little bald birdie that he’s been running around like he’s got barbed wire up his ass.”
Their waitress chose that moment to deliver their drinks. Danielle grabbed her tea and started to gulp, trying to find something like composure before she responded. No luck. Clutching at her promise not to mention his name, she wasted another thirty seconds wiping condensation off the glass. Niall was living with Ryan, so he’d have the birdie’s-eye view.
Danielle got to hear about it, thanks to the O’Connor Family mafia.
“So since Cherry’s old news, I guess you and Ryan are it.” Maeve said, pulling Danielle back into the conversation with a sardonic smirk.
“Oh.” Not going there. No effing way. Sometimes the best defense was a frontal assault. Danielle schooled her face and kept her delivery smooth. “Do your hands always shake like that?”
“Shake? What?” Maeve showed Danielle her empty palms. Both hands had a very slight tremor.
“Like that.”
Maeve pressed her fingertips against her forehead, creating a defensive shield for her eyes. “I guess they do sometimes. I went to the Pig last night and probably had one too many.”
Alcoholics depended on denial, so Danielle didn’t want to push too hard. At least she’d managed to get the conversation off Ryan. “What was going on at the Pig?”
“The usual. I just stopped in after work.” Some of the tension faded from Maeve’s shoulders. “I hung out with Christopher for a while.”
Danielle couldn’t help but grin. “That’s cool. You should go out with him.”
“Christopher? No way. He’s a player.”
“Oh, it’s okay for me to go out with a player, but not for you?”
“That’s different.”
Danielle snickered, and after a minute, Maeve joined her. It was a short laugh, tentative, with a dash more sarcasm than Danielle usually projected. But they were laughing together. The way friends do.
“And if you’re rehearsing a Maeve-drinks-too-much speech, don’t bother,” Maeve said. “You’ll have to get in line behind Mom and Dad and Niall.” Maeve made a disgusted snort. “Even Eamon takes a swing at me every now and then.”
“Do you think they’re wrong?”
“Hell no.” An echo of sadness carried through Maeve’s defiant words. “I’m just not ready to do anything about it.”
The waitress with the amazing timing arrived with their salads, and both women thanked her. They picked at their food and reminisced about high school, and Danielle left in a marginally better mood.
At least until she got to the house and realized Ryan wouldn’t be coming over.
Ryan drove straight home after the day job. Again. No stop in Magnolia. He was done with that. As much as he liked Dani – hell, maybe even loved her – he couldn’t deal with another woman who played games. Cherry had cured him of that.
Traffic didn’t suck too bad, and when he got home, Niall and Chubb were camped out at the dining room table. Chubb’s shit-eating smile suggested he’d made a new friend sometime in the recent past. Niall grinned like a kid, as if Chubb’s success gave him too much vicarious stimulation.
“What was her name?” Ryan asked.
Niall faked a cough to cover his laugh, and Chubb sat up straighter, removing his feet from the neighboring chair.
“Whose name?” he said. “What makes you think I’m talking about a woman?”
Ryan flicked the hickey on his roommate’s neck on his way by. “Lucky guess.”
Niall’s guffaw earned him a flying bird from Chubb.
“I need to make you rub my bald head, dude, so some of your luck will rub off on me,” Niall said.
Ryan had to agree. Niall’s soon-to-be-ex-wife had done a serious number on him. A little recreational sex would be a good thing, though he wasn’t sure his conservative older brother would ever be ready for Chubb’s freak show. “Be careful what you wish for, bro.”
Chubb rested his elbows on the table and kicked a chair in Ryan’s direction. “If you weren’t Mr. Monogamy, you might have fun, too.”
Ryan ignored them both and went to the fridge for a beer. Coming back into the dining area, he grabbed the chair Chubb’s feet had freed up and straddled it. Niall and Chubb compared notes on the best places to go to meet chicks, and Ryan nursed his beer, running back through the scene at Dani’s for the seven-hundredth time. The memory was about as comfortable as scraping sandpaper over sunburn. He wasn’t really threatened by her ex, could have dealt with hiding things from Maeve, and even hiding things from her coworkers in L.A. It was the flat-out lie over something stupid that drove him into his presen
t mindset.
Right now he needed space more than he needed to bury himself in her body. Though it likely wouldn’t take long for him to go crawling back.
“What are you doing here, anyway?” Niall knocked against Ryan’s elbow, bringing his attention back to the present. “Don’t you have some nails to pound?”
“Heh. Nails.” Chubb snickered into his bottle.
Ryan tipped his beer for a long swallow before he answered. “I’m taking a break.”
“Your hammer all worn out?” Chubb smacked the table with an open palm, all kinds of amused at his own joke.
“My hammer’s fine.” Ryan stood, weary joints whining at the effort, too tired to put up with Chubb’s bullshit. He could finish his beer on the way to the shower.
Niall put a hand on Ryan’s forearm. “No, seriously, what’s up? This is the second evening in a row you’ve been home early. Everything okay with Danielle?”
Ryan shook his brother off and headed for the door. “We’re done.”
Ignoring the variations on ‘what the hell?’ from his brother and his best friend, Ryan downed another long swallow of beer on his way down the hall. They’d keep up their chatter, a couple of old nanny goats who’d bonded over skeevy women and now had him to pick apart. They could have at it as long as he didn’t have to listen.
In the four days since Ryan had last talked to Dani, he’d gone from frozen pissed to aching angry. Now, he just wanted to crawl into bed next to her, to lose himself in kisses that were soft and fierce at the same time, and to wrap himself in her rose scent.
Nope, he was done. No more gorgeous redheads for him.
His dick had other ideas, snapping to attention as he slid out of his jeans. Somehow he always ended up with a hard-on, whether she was with him or not. He dropped onto the edge of his bed, stroking himself up further, channeling all his anger and frustration into a vicious orgasm that left him drained.
And exhausted.
And lonely.
Wednesday, Danielle sanded and primed. Thursday, she painted. The heavy rain made it easy to spend time indoors, though even the steady activity and the old oil heater couldn’t warm her core.
Or else the cold was from the hole Ryan left.
By Friday morning, it rained hard enough and long enough that the news-geeks’ chatter had turned to mudslides. A section of the rail line between Seattle and Everett was closed because of a slide, and the morning news pelted viewers with stories about past disasters.
Perkins Lane was featured prominently in all of them.
Danielle wanted – no, needed – a latte, but between the winding road and the heavy rain, steering the Mini was like navigating a submarine. Branches drooped into her field of vision, water weighing them down.
Coming out of the Magnolia Coffee Company with her prize, Danielle had a near-manicure experience. Three doors down from the coffee shop, LuAnn’s Nails called to her. Danielle made it as far as the door before deciding to wait until she’d finished painting. Why trash a perfectly good manicure with taupe semi-gloss? She’d put manicures on hold until she’d settled the house deal.
Hell, she’d put her life on hold until she settled the house deal.
Instead of a peaceful hour in a nail salon, she went back home and picked up the to-do list. She came close to calling Christopher to ask if he knew a good carpenter. She already had a good carpenter, though without him the rest of her life had turned into an endless tunnel of bleak.
Danielle hunched over the laptop, jabbing the keys, pretending to look for a roofer. The heavy overcast outside funneled straight into her belly, dragging her low, and in her head, she argued with Ryan.
I didn’t mean to lie.
Imaginary Ryan crossed his arms and scowled. Except to Maeve. About me.
No. I mean, you know why.
I told you I hated games. Imaginary Ryan’s smile was all heavy and disappointed, and Danielle wanted to slap him.
A tiny headache spread up the back of her neck, clinging to the muscles the way ivy sticks to brick. Part of her acknowledged that going along with Maeve had been a mistake. The rest of her was pretty convinced Ryan needed to get a handle on his temper. The current drama was not all her fault.
Oh. Wait. Yes it was.
The rain rotated between sprinkling, spattering, and downright pouring, and Danielle threw a presto-log in the fireplace, trying to take the edge off the chill. She was too tired to paint, too sad to find motivation, and too frustrated to deal with the house. Instead, she dragged the wing chair close to the fire, made a nest out of blankets, and opened her laptop to her Pinterest page.
Her redecorating fantasies were interrupted by a burst of thunder, a rare event for a city with its reputation built on rain. The thunder went on and on, longer than it should have, louder than a low-flying jumbo jet. The noise vibrated in her bones. Confused, she jumped up and went to the window, only to be knocked back by a blast that slammed into the wall of the house.
Mud.
It smashed through the window, a heavy, sludgy mass studded with rocks and tangled roots. Glass shards flew out like a spray of foam above the wave. Each one stabbed down into the floor, the wall, or the muck. Thick, wet dirt rolled over the fire, smothering it. The wing chair got shoved against the fireplace, only one of its ball feet on the ground. The floor lamp went down hard. Danielle stumbled out of the way, landing on her ass in the dining room.
Then the noise stopped.
The flow lost its force right at Danielle’s feet, leaving her stunned at the edge of the wave. She shook her head and scattered shards of glass from her hair. Something warm trickled down her cheek. Blood from a cut near her temple. Mud splattered the fireplace tile she’d spent hours cleaning. Streaks marred the chair rail molding under the window. A layer several inches deep covered much of the living room floor.
Wind and rain blew through the broken window. Danielle hugged herself, shivering from a combination of the cold and the shock wrapping around her head like cotton batting. Her teeth couldn’t chatter much harder. The Mini’s car alarm shrieked, a perfect soundtrack for the scene.
The wing chair lost its fight with gravity and toppled over. The laptop slid out of the seat into the sludge, its screen going black. She let them sit, disbelief slowing her responses. The newscasters claimed the City had done amazing things to stabilize the bluff, and mudslides wouldn’t be a problem anymore.
Wrong.
Danielle’s L.A. experience kicked in. If an earthquake had done this much damage, she’d expect to evacuate. She’d shut the power and water off and go someplace safe. If a patient had an emergency at work, she’d take the necessary action and deal with the emotional stuff some other time. Power. Water. Something to cover the window.
Move it.
She went downstairs, grabbing a dishtowel on her way through the kitchen to wipe the blood off her face. At the bottom of the steps, she tried not to notice the new cracks in the basement’s concrete floor. She flipped the breaker, cut power to the house, and went in search of the water shut-off, keeping the towel pressed to the cut that hurt the worst. She could call Maeve. She could call Ryan. Her hands were too numb to manipulate the phone.
Back upstairs, she avoided as much of the mess as possible, rounding the edge of the living room into the foyer. The intermittent shrieking of the car alarm stabbed at her composure, and she grabbed her car keys on the way by. When she turned the knob, the front door popped against her hand, the weight of a knee-high hill of gravelly sludge pushing through and splattering at her feet. The stream of debris had been funneled through the driveway, tearing up the laurels closest to it. One of the tall shrubs lay on its side, tangled roots torn from the earth, its leathery green leaves plastered with dirt.
Even sadder, her Mini was canted up against the garage, rear wheels higher than the front end.
Despite her careful navigation, her shoes were soon caked with mud. Her fingers were numb from cold and shock, and it took four tries to hit the �
�silence’ button on her key fob. When the Mini’s alarm finally stopped, the quiet echoed.
To the north, the road was completely blocked. Who knew how long it would take the city to clear it? She forced back the image of the cracked basement floor. Later she could worry about the damage to the house.
Worry. Later.
The stream of mud had come down the bluff to the north of Grandmother’s house. The big new-construction faux-Craftsman next door jutted up from a pool of black, its baby rhododendrons mashed up against the front wall. On the south side, the 1940s box was pretty clear. If the slide had started a little more to the south, most of it would have run into the laurel hedge, which would have at least slowed things down and protected Grandmother’s house. The owner of the ‘40s box, however, would be standing in her living room surrounded by smashed windows and piles of mud.
It was all so random.
The Mini wasn’t going anywhere, but Danielle was going to have to. She didn’t have time for a big sob-fest, so she stuffed the tears away until her gut filled with sadness and she could barely move.
It would take months – years even – to get rid of it all.
After packing her injured laptop and a few essentials in an overnight bag, she tacked one of Ryan’s plastic drop-cloths around the broken front window with a staple gun. She grabbed a wool cap and pulled on a jacket. Carrying her bag with the strap diagonally across her chest to keep her hands free, she started out.
She forgot to put on gloves, and soon her fingers were reddened and numb. The smell of damp earth surrounded her and the water view was obscured by a heavy curtain of rain and mist. Walking the mile to Uncle Jonathan’s was likely going to be an excursion through several levels of hell.
Even worse, it gave her too much time to think, when she wasn’t dodging emergency vehicles trying to make their way down to the slide. Thoughts about all the money she’d spent. Gone. Thoughts about her grandmother. Gone. Thoughts about Ryan. Gone.