When Lightning Strikes Twice

by Barbara Boswell

  Dana started to go upstairs to her room and ended up outside on the front porch. She hadn’t told her parents what the strangest thing she’d seen in Oak Shade happened to be, but she couldn’t put it from her mind.

  While lost on Route 70, Rich had driven past a cheesy dive called the Doll House, and she’d seen a dark green Mercedes in the parking lot outside. It looked enough like Wade’s car to actually be his car, but Wade would never venture into a dump like that.

  Parked next to the Mercedes was a big black Range Rover like the one in Pedersen’s Car Shoppe window. Rich had seen the cars, too, and remarked on the folly of parking such valuable vehicles in front of such a low-scale place. He quoted the statistical odds of car theft in relation to car models and locations.

  A short while later, after Rich had turned around to head in the right direction, they passed the Doll House again. This time Dana saw the first three letters SAX of Wade’s vanity plates on the green Mercedes. It was Wade’s car! Stolen? That seemed more likely than Wade as a Doll House patron.

  “It’s supposed to be warm and sunny tomorrow,” her mother reported, standing in the doorway. “Are you coming inside, dear?”

  “I think I’ll sit out here and wait for Shawn,” said Dana.

  To keep her mind off Wade, she might as well concentrate on her brother. She decided to try a different approach with Shawn tonight. To be friendly and accessible instead of furious and condemning. Last night she and her sisters had deepened Shawn’s loyalty toward Misty by forcing him to defend her while they attacked her. Just what Tim’s Lisa had predicted would happen.

  “Shawn is staying over at Chad’s tonight. Dad and I are heading to bed now. Good night, hon.”

  “ ‘Night Mom.” Dana sounded calm but she was not.

  Shawn was not at his pal Chad’s tonight; she would wager a whole year’s salary on that, and she wasn’t a gambling woman. He was with Misty Tilden and suddenly various images fit together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle to clearly reveal the entire picture.

  Wade actually was at the Doll House, and now Dana knew why—because Shawn and Misty Tilden were there. That black Range Rover parked next to Wade’s car had to belong to Misty; she must have bought it right out of Pedersen’s showroom window.

  At the office today, Quint had mentioned that his star client was going to Pedersen’s Car Shoppe to buy herself a set of wheels. Helen had speculated Misty would insist on a bubblegum pink Ferarri. “Something like Barbie drives,” she’d added, uncharacteristically snide.

  But if Misty had taken Shawn along on the car-shopping trip, he would direct her toward something like the Range Rover, because it was big and dark and hulking like the military vehicles he admired.

  That Misty Tilden would go to the Doll House seemed unremarkable to Dana. A place like that probably felt like home to the former nude lap dancer. And somehow Wade had learned Shawn and Misty were there and gone to take his turn talking some sense into the younger Sheely brother.

  Dana knew that no matter how Wade Saxon might currently feel toward her, he cared deeply for her family. He would do anything for her parents, for Tim. He’d want to help Shawn. So he had gone to the Doll House to try.

  She didn’t think any further than that. Acting on sheer impulse, she went back inside to grab her purse and car keys and drove straight to the Doll House.

  When she pulled into the lot, the Mercedes and the Range Rover were still parked side by side, their undisturbed presence a challenge to Rich Vicker’s car-theft statistics.

  Her courage faltered when she reached the Doll House door. Now that she was here, she wasn’t sure what she was going to say to either Wade or Shawn. Nor was she eager for any kind of a face-to-face confrontation with Misty, with whom she’d always dealt politely in Quint’s office.

  She could hear the music from within, a blaringly loud rendition of En Vogue’s “Never Gonna Get It.” Dana tried to tell herself it wasn’t prophetic, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that coming here had been an excruciatingly bad idea.

  She stood there, paralyzed by indecision, unable to make herself enter the Doll House but unwilling to give up and go back home.

  Later, Dana wondered how long she would have remained there and what she eventually would have done, if the decision hadn’t been made for her by the arrival of an Oak Shade police car. Its siren was silenced, but the blue-and-red lights on top flashed ominously.

  Though the urge to dash to her car and peel out of the lot was powerful, Dana didn’t cede to it. The officers had already seen her. Better to take the initiative and approach them first.

  She walked toward them as they advanced to the door, their guns drawn.

  “My little brother is in there,” she told the taller, meaner-looking one of the pair. The courage she’d failed to summon earlier was suddenly there. Or perhaps talking to policemen, even stern-faced ones, was preferable to entering a pit like the Doll House.

  “I’ve been standing here, trying to work up the nerve to go in and get him but I couldn’t do it,” Dana forged ahead bravely.

  “Is the kid underage?” the cop asked grimly.

  Dana shook her head. “But he’s a very impressionable twenty-three. He told our folks he’s staying with a friend tonight, but not the one he’s really with. And I’m sure he’s in there with her.”

  “You’re right to be concerned about your brother if he is in there,” said the other officer. “This place isn’t supposed to be open. Judge Jackson ordered it closed, but Sweaty Eddie doesn’t like to obey court orders.”

  “Are you going to raid it?” Dana asked, wide-eyed. “Oh, please, let me take my brother home first.”

  “I’m sorry, we can’t do that, miss,” said the tall cop. “We’re here to close down this place and we’re taking everybody inside to the station.”

  “And arrest them?” Dana was horrified. Shawn and Wade arrested! “Are they going to be put in jail?”

  “Sweaty Eddie, sure. And maybe the dancing girls because we heard they dance topless or less, and that’s a zone violation. The others—depending on how it goes—maybe we’ll just put a scare into them,” confided the younger, shorter, more friendly cop. He seemed to be trying to reassure her.

  Dana knew enough about the law to surmise they had no grounds to arrest the patrons of an illegally open bar. But she wasn’t positive, and even if no charges were ever filed, getting hauled to the Oak Shade Police Station where a “scare” was to be deliberately induced struck her as bad enough.

  “If people keep coming to this place, Aiken will keep defying the orders to close it,” continued Officer Friendly. “As long as this place makes money, it’s cheaper for him to stay open and pay the fines.”

  And his lawyer’s bills, Dana thought but didn’t say.

  “But if the customers are taken to the police station and held there a while, even if no charges are brought against them, they just might decide it’s not worth it to come back to this dump.” She nodded her comprehension of the strategy, trying to stall the raid, although she knew it was hopeless.

  “You come on down to the Oak Shade Police Station in a couple or three hours and possibly, we’ll release your brother to you,” the meaner-looking cop said. “Now take yourself out of here. This is no place for a nice kid like you.”

  Dana decided maybe he wasn’t so mean, after all. She headed slowly to her car. She felt like a traitor, abandoning both Wade and Shawn without even sounding a warning. But already a plan was beginning to formulate, a plan requiring that she’ remain free to summon help.

  Eve Saxon wouldn’t want her beloved nephew to undergo a scare at the Oak Shade jail, would she? And as long as Eve was springing Wade, she might be talked into getting Shawn out, too. Misty, Dana decided, was on her own.

  Dana pulled out onto Route 70 as the officers entered the Doll House. There was a convenience store just down the highway, where she could place a call to Eve. She wondered if Chief Spagna would be there, and a nervous shiver
rippled through her. The chief didn’t seem as if he suffered lawbreakers gladly, and if he and Eve were—busy—he would resent the interruption even more. Not that Wade or Shawn were lawbreakers but even so …

  Dana pulled into the convenience store and headed straight for the phone booth before she could talk herself out of placing the call for help.

  19

  Rachel’s eyelids kept fluttering shut. She would force them open, though each time required greater effort. She was lying with Quint, spoon-fashion, his arms around her, her bottom tucked into the cradle of his thighs in a king-size bed in their Philadelphia hotel room.

  They’d just spent the past hour and a half experiencing the most profound and primal pleasure, and she wanted to savor this fantasic glowing aftermath. But her own body was fighting to lapse into an exhausted, sated sleep.

  “Just let yourself go to sleep, Rachel.” Quint had been observing her struggle to stay awake. He kissed the top of her head lovingly, indulgently.

  “I don’t want to go to sleep. Because when I wake up, it’ll be morning and time to check out of here. We’ll be back to dealing with the Tildens and Saxon Associates, back to Cormack and Son, and Laurel and Carla.”

  She much preferred this private fantasy they were living, the two of them naked and alone in their own sensual world.

  “And Brady?” Quint asked carefully. There was a sudden air of alert edginess about him.

  Rachel sat up. “I’m sorry you have to ask, Quint. But since you did—No, I don’t consider Brady an intrusion or an obstacle.”

  “Sure he is.” Quint chuckled, relaxing once again. “But at least he’s a small one. The others are full-grown.”

  “I want to be with Brady, but I freely admit that I could use a vacation from the others.”

  “Same here.” He pulled her back down to him. “There’s no chance of that vacation anytime soon, but we can both be with Brady tomorrow. It’s Sarah’s night off. Come over after work, and the three of us will have dinner together. We can go to—”

  “Why don’t I cook dinner at your place?” Rachel suggested. “Brady seems to eat out a lot for a child his age. Maybe staying home for dinner will be a welcome change of pace for him.”

  “It’ll be a welcome change of pace for me,” stated Quint, kissing her lingeringly. “It’s a deal. I’ll grill us something but if you make macaroni and cheese, especially the kind from the box, Brady will be ecstatic. Mommy.”

  Rachel lay his arms, facing him. The room was dark but a shaft of moonlight shone through the gap in the curtains, providing some illumination. She traced her fingertips over the features of his face.

  “I should have corrected him the first time he called me Mommy, but I liked hearing him say it too much,” she confessed softly.

  “I wish you really were his mother. Maybe if I had come to Lakeview a few years earlier and met you then, you would’ve been.” Quint allowed himself a revisionist fantasy, a practice he rarely indulged. His arms tightened around her.

  Rachel thought of little Brady and how much she wished things had happened that way. But that meant obliterating the existence of the woman who really had given birth to Quint’s son and taken care of him for nearly a year before turning him over to his father. Had she meant her exit to be permanent? And if not, then what?

  “When Sharolyn comes back and asks to see Brady—” she began.

  “If she comes back and if she asks to see him,” corrected Quint. “Both are unlikely.”

  “Are you really going to keep Sharolyn from ever contacting Brady or were you just saying that to shake up Laurel?” Rachel felt Quint tense, and she snuggled closer, to soothe him. “We can’t just pretend she doesn’t exist, Quint. It wouldn’t be fair to Brady in the long run.”

  “It isn’t fair to Brady that she does exist, and that I was stupid enough to hook up with her in the first place,” Quint growled.

  “Which is something of a paradox,” Rachel felt obliged to point out. “If you’d never hooked up with Sharolyn, you wouldn’t have Brady. Do you intend to keep her away from him forever, Quint? Can you, if she should want to see him?”

  “God, Rachel, don’t play devil’s advocate now! The last thing I feel like doing is debating custody issues.”

  “I don’t want to debate either.” She trailed her forefinger down his chest. “But you know how lawyers are, we can’t quit arguing till we’ve gotten in at least one token point.”

  Quint groaned. “Okay, get it over with.”

  “It’s just that Brady isn’t always going to be a little boy. What happens when he becomes a teenager and—”

  “I see where you’re going with this,” Quint cut in. “Believe me, if anybody knows that little kids will tolerate parental mistakes a lot better than adolescents, it’s me.”

  “You were the epitome of the angry teen, hmm?” Rachel brushed her lips across his throat. “Who can blame you with Frank Cormack for a father?”

  She drew back a little and met his eyes. “I want to know everything about you and your life, but I don’t want to aggravate you with a barrage of questions.”

  “You’ve got me pegged, sweetie. A barrage of questions would definitely aggravate me.” He took her hand and kissed her palm, teasing it with the tip of his tongue. “But I might make an exception for you.”

  “Thanks, sweetie.”

  They smiled at each other.

  “It doesn’t sound quite so offensively sexist when you say it here,” Rachel admitted.

  “So you’ll grant me permission to call you ‘sweetie’ in bed?”

  “Permission granted.”

  “I’m deeply grateful,” he said dryly. “And ready for question number one.”

  “It’s funny but with some people, you don’t even have to ask a single question, they pour out their entire past the first hour you spend with them.” Rachel cuddled closer, thinking back on years of dating, listening to one life story after another. Feeling safe from that now. “But not you. I don’t even know your sister’s name or where she and your mother live.”

  Quint was quiet for so long, Rachel wondered if he’d fallen asleep. She hoped not, because she was wide-awake now and eager to talk.

  “Quint?” she prompted in a low whisper, not wanting to wake him if he really was sleeping.

  “The way you phrased it,” Quint murmured his response. “So easily, so normal. I was thinking how much I’ve missed that, in reference to Mom and Colette.”

  An uneasy Rachel tried to remember exactly what she’d said. Something about where his mother and sister lived … Her heart caught in her throat and her eyes flew to his face. She knew it before he said it.

  “My mother and Colette, my sister, don’t live anywhere. They’re both dead, Rachel.”

  “Oh God Quint, I’m so sorry.” She hugged him hard. “What happened? And when?”

  “They were in a freeway accident near Santa Monica five years ago. Colette’s husband Daniel was driving, Colette was in the passenger seat and Mom in the back. A tractor-trailer rear-ended their car and threw it across four lanes of traffic. All three were killed, along with another driver and two passengers in other cars. The highway patrolman told me it was one of the worst accidents he’d ever seen.”

  “I don’t know what to say except I’m so sorry, again.” Rachel clung to him, as if to warm him with her own body heat for his voice and his words were chilling. “It must have been terrible, losing your whole family.”

  “That’s exactly what happened. In one instant, my whole family was gone. Mom and Colette and Daniel, too. Colette was five months pregnant with their first baby.” Quint felt Rachel draw a sharp, shocked breath, and her reaction pleased him in a perverse way. He liked people to be horrified and shocked by the scope of the tragedy; his family deserved nothing less.

  “Oh, Quint,” she murmured sadly. There were no words.

  “I wasn’t one of those people who are ennobled by loss. I’d been self-centered before, commitment-phobic
but not owning up to it, running through women and relationships, deliberately charming and deceptive. You know the type.” Quint grimaced wryly.

  “Very well. But you don’t fit that profile, Quint.”

  “I used to, and after the accident I was even worse. It wasn’t until Sharolyn turned up at my office demanding money for an abortion when it finally hit me. Despite my mother’s valiant attempts to raise me to be the right kind of man—like her older brother, my uncle Joe—I was no better than Frank Cormack, whom I’d despised all those years.”

  He sat up against the pillows, and she moved up, too, staying close, her arms around him.

  “Once I got over the initial shock, it dawned on me that Sharolyn’s problem was my child. I thought of Colette’s baby that never had the chance to be born. I convinced Sharolyn to marry me and go through with the pregnancy. To do otherwise meant losing another member of my family, and I couldn’t take that.”

  Quint smiled mirthlessly. “When I finally got around to calling my father to tell him I was married and going to be a father, he told me I was an idiot. I tried to explain the baby’s connection to my mother and Colette, but he just didn’t get it.”

  “Was Frank always so—” Rachel paused. There were too many pejorative words to choose from. “So—”

  “Yeah, always.” Quint already knew them. “He walked out on my mother when I was four and Colette was two. We lived near Trenton then, and for the next eight years, he went through women and marriages and stumbled in and out of our lives. As a little kid, I was always thrilled when he remembered Colette and I existed. I enjoyed every minute of those visits with him. He was extravagant and fun, and he didn’t act like any other adult we knew. He was almost a fantasy figure.”

  “More like a phantasm. But a child wouldn’t be able to understand the difference.”

  “True. For every time Frank took us out, there were ten times he didn’t show up when we were expecting him to. Finally my mother decided to take her older brother Joe up on his offer to help her move to California and put some distance between us and Frank. We left Jersey when I was twelve and Colette was ten and moved into the same town as Uncle Joe. He was a cop, a good one. A good man with the patience of a saint. He needed it because a year later I became one of those furious adolescents, acting out all the rage I’d swallowed when I was a kid trying to make excuses for Frank Cormack.”