As good as her word, Aggie was trying out her newly synthesized “act” at the Laugh-Inn. The woman had lain in wait for each of them last night, springing out the moment they’d separately emerged from their cars. She’d tendered a verbal invitation along with a plea to come and cheer her on tonight.
It was hard turning down someone who looked like your grandmother in need, MacKenzie thought. But if anyone could have turned Aggie down, she figured Quade would be the one to do it. Yet here he was. Scowling, but here.
He’d even gone so far as to offer to drive. She’d accepted without even thinking about it.
She drew in her breath as she felt his hand against her back, guiding her. Warmth flooded her. When had they cut off the air to the place?
MacKenzie forced herself to focus on the question he’d growled and not on the effect he was having on her. “I think it’s because they don’t want you to notice that the walls need painting and the tables could stand a restaining.”
Now, rather than walking behind her, he was next to her. And giving her that look that could have easily X-rayed her entire body. “You noticed.”
She shrugged. “It’s the domestic side of me.”
She had almost made a comment about a nesting instinct taking over, but stopped herself just in time. It was the kind of comment that would immediately send a man running for the hills, eager to put miles between himself and the female who uttered it.
But the urge for nesting had nothing to do with him and everything to do with the baby inside of her.
“This table okay?” the waitress who had been leading the way asked. She didn’t bother to wait for a reply, but abruptly walked away in response to someone gesturing for her at a nearby table.
“I guess she really didn’t want an answer to that,” MacKenzie commented. About to sit down, she was surprised when Quade pulled out the chair for her, then helped her in. “Thank you,” she murmured.
Quade slid into his own chair and faced the stage. “Don’t look so surprised. I wasn’t about to pull it out from under you.”
“I know that—it’s just that chivalry is so rare these days.”
“Maybe it shouldn’t be,” he said gruffly, looking around as his eyes grew accustomed to his surroundings.
The dimly lit room had approximately fifteen tables in it, most for two, some for three and one long one that accommodated eight in the rear of the small room. Seven people were spread out around it now. Obviously the family and/or friends of one of the performers risking mental castration tonight, Quade thought darkly. He settled in, prepared to make the best of it. Hoping it wouldn’t last too long.
MacKenzie had come reluctantly. Not because she didn’t want to be supportive, but because she hated that queasy, unsettled feeling that came over her by proxy. The one she was sure was shared by police personnel assigned to the bomb squad. She’d been in the entertainment business for more than a handful of years now and yet, each time she was privy to a performer’s debut, she felt as if she were channeling their nervousness through her own body. Her palms grew sweaty.
There were times when her ability to empathize really was challenging.
Quade brushed against her hand as he reached for the single-paged, slightly stained menu in front of the candle. Surprised, he looked at her. If anything, the club was overly warm. “Your hands as cold as ice.”
“Nerves.”
“Why? You’re not going on.”
“I know. I just get nervous for performers,” she confessed. “Especially if I know them.”
“You didn’t have to come,” he pointed out matter-of-factly. Nothing on the menu moved him. He set it down again.
She wondered if things were always completely black-and-white in his world. She would have liked to think not. “Nothing worse than going on without a friendly face in the audience.”
It still made no sense to him. “I would have been here.”
“Well, I couldn’t have been sure of that and, besides, I wouldn’t exactly call your face friendly.” She touched it before she could think out her action. A zap of electricity telegraphed itself to her. More nerves, but of a different variety. She needed a long vacation, she decided. Alone. “At least,” MacKenzie amended, not wanting to insult him, “not most of the time.”
The waitress appeared before Quade answered her. With one hip jutting up higher than the other, the young woman’s stance was expectant as she looked from MacKenzie’s face to Quade’s.
“So? What’ll it be?” Her tone told them to make it snappy, that she had better things to do than stand in front of a table, waiting for the occupants’ order. “There’s a two-drink minimum.”
Out of habit, MacKenzie began to order a white wine. She stopped herself at the last moment. Although her mother’s generation had never had the no-alcohol rule and had produced healthy babies, she was not about to take any chances on her future child’s welfare. Besides, she had already given up her life-affirming cup of coffee in the morning. Giving up alcohol for the next eight months was far less of a challenge.
“I’ll have a ginger ale,” she told the waitress.
The brassy blonde tugged on one of the three earrings she wore in her right earlobe and stared at MacKenzie as if she were some kind of freak of nature. “You one of those Pennsylvania Dutch type people?”
A note of annoyance entered MacKenzie’s voice. She was hot, tired and nervous. She didn’t need attitude. “No, I’m not Amish. I just like ginger ale.”
“Make that two,” Quade said, drawing the woman’s scornful look away from MacKenzie.
“You want a ginger ale, too?”
“That’s what I said.” His voice was low, steely and not to be trifled with.
Shrugging, the waitress tugged back the neckline that had slipped off her shoulder and then sauntered away. “Customer’s always right,” she muttered in a tone that said she believed just the opposite.
Why Quade’s simple gestured affected MacKenzie so, she couldn’t say. There was a warmth in the center of her belly that hadn’t been there before. She leaned in toward him in order to be heard above the din. “You didn’t have to do that.”
Gratitude slid off him like rain down a windowpane. He preferred being without it. “I didn’t like her condescending attitude. You’ve got a right to order anything you want.”
Still, she had a feeling he would have preferred something stronger, at least a beer. All the men she’d ever known had preferred beer to soft drinks. “Do you even like ginger ale?”
He shrugged away the question. “I didn’t come here because I needed to drink.”
That part of his life was behind him. There were no answers in the bottom of a bottle. He’d learned that the hard way after he’d almost drowned in one. He had no desire to return to the scene of the crime. It took more courage facing life sober and he’d never liked thinking of himself as a coward.
“I came here because Aggie asked me to come,” he told MacKenzie. “Since there’s a two-drink minimum, I have to order. But there’s no rule that says I have to order what a waitress with the upbringing of a disaffected orangutan thinks I should order.”
MacKenzie was grinning at him. And her smile did a great deal more to light up the place than the meager floating candles in the center of each table. He had to mentally pull back before he was completely drawn in to the woman.
“What?”
“That’s probably the most you’ve said at one time since I’ve met you.”
“It probably is,” he agreed.
The waitress returned with their ginger ales. She disdainfully placed a glass in front of each of them, then sullenly withdrew as someone else called to get her attention.
“Keep your shirt on—they don’t pay me to hurry,” she barked.
They obviously didn’t pay her to be polite, either, MacKenzie thought. She took a sip and then looked at Quade. “Think Aggie will be any good?”
His mind immediately turned toward Aggie. “God, I hope s
o.”
It would be hard enough to sit through this if the woman was good. If she was bad, it would be utter torture. Especially if she asked his opinion. He’d never been able to lie, even under the best of circumstances. The only time he’d actually tried was to tell Ellen she was going to get well.
He looked so solemn for a moment, MacKenzie strove to change the subject. “Dakota got in contact with Mr. Petrocelli.”
She saw mild interest enter his eyes as he watched her. The atmosphere within the club smelled faintly of cheap liquor and the scent of fear emanating from the people clustered just off stage right, waiting to come out and meet either life-affirming laughter or soul-robbing silence. None of this could seem even remotely romantic and yet, with the small candles flickering on each table and the low murmur of voices in the background, that was exactly what it was to her. Romantic.
Or maybe it had to do with the man sitting opposite her at a table hardly large enough for two. With every movement, every shift on her seat, she felt her leg brush against his. Felt something akin to a current passing through her, putting her on notice. Making her alert.
She had a hard time concentrating on where she was, on who she was. It had to be the pregnancy that made her feel strongly toward him. And yet, a small part of her rejoiced over her reaction to Quade. Rejoiced because a very large part of her had thought that after her breakup with Jeff, she had ceased to feel anything at all. And that had made her very afraid. She took another drink of her ginger ale. How had life gotten so very complicated?
She realized that Quade was waiting for her to follow up the statement that now seemed to be flapping madly in the wind, unaccompanied by more words.
“And?” he finally prodded.
“They agreed on a date. She’s free for an evening the night of the twenty-eighth. It’s a Saturday,” she added in case he didn’t know.
Quade felt like a man who had just been led into a windowless room and had the door slam shut behind him. “That’s in two and a half weeks.”
“Too soon?” she guessed. It wasn’t really a guess. She’d seen stage fright before, even when it was as well masked as this. There was a slight flare to his sculpted nose, a discomfort around the eyes.
He leveled with her, although he didn’t ordinarily share his thoughts with people. “To find a tux, no. To write a speech, yes.”
She placed her hand over his in silent camaraderie. “You’ll do a great job.”
She sounded a hell of a lot more confident about it than he did. He knew better but was reasonably sure that to say so would only pull him into a lengthy discussion, one which he knew he hadn’t a prayer of winning.
For one thing, her mouth moved a great deal faster than his did.
He didn’t even bother making the attempt.
The next moment, a haggard-looking man came out and crossed to the lone microphone standing forlornly in the center of the stage.
A small drumroll accompanied him and a guitarist, the owner’s son, sat to the right of the man’s drum set.
The drumroll effectively sliced through the residual conversation until silence eventually followed.
MacKenzie doubted she’d ever seen a more forced smile than the one beneath the emcee’s rather matted mustache.
“Hi, I’m Henderson Ames, the emcee and the owner of the club. Most of you know me as Henny.” Not a single murmur greeted the statement. “I see a lot of faces I recognize and a few new ones.”
The owner seemed to be looking in their direction, but MacKenzie couldn’t be sure. Their table was two rows back from the front and Ames was cut off by the glare of a single, lonely spotlight.
“You all know the drill by now. We’ve got a handful of would-be comics, some repeaters. They’ll all compete against each other. If you think that the next Robin Williams or Whoopi Goldberg is among them, show me by your applause. The winner gets the handsome prize of fifty bucks.” Someone in the audience groaned. “Hey, it buys a meal or two. Am I right?” He beckoned for an answer and there were murmurs of agreement. The man smiled broadly again, reminding MacKenzie of a snake in a fabled children’s movie. “So, without any further delay, let’s bring out our first performer. Stoker Michaels.”
He backed away as the man he had just introduced took the stage. MacKenzie noticed that the latter’s hand trembled ever so slightly as he took hold of the microphone.
She could feel her stomach pitching.
Aggie was the fourth on the bill. By the time the older woman came out, MacKenzie had felt mortified twice and laughed three times at the second performer. The man had walked off, beaming as if he felt he owned the evening.
A slight murmur rippled through the crowd. It was obvious that no one had expected anyone over the age of thirty to be starting out on a career as a stand-up comedian.
Aggie came out wearing a flattering navy-blue tunic and matching pants. Taking the microphone in hand, she looked as comfortable with it as she had handling a spatula over the stove in her apartment the other night.
Quade thought of the speech he was going to have to deliver and envied the woman her apparent ease.
For a moment, after the welcoming applause had died down, coming most zealously from MacKenzie, there was nothing but silence.
MacKenzie held her breath. She was afraid that Aggie had forgotten the beginning of her act or, worse, had become frozen with stage fright.
The next minute, she realized that she could have saved herself the agony by proxy. Aggie was just searching the crowd for a target to focus on in order to begin her act.
Finally, she zeroed in on a bald man sitting beside a petite woman. “You there. The man with the pretty lady sitting at his side. Yes, you,” she affirmed when the bald man pointed to himself. “You have a mother-in-law? Of course you do,” she said quickly before he could respond. “Your face looks as if you’ve been drinking persimmon juice for an hour. Always a sure sign.” Moving away from the man, she focused on the rest of the audience, treating them as if they had all melded into one person, a confidante she was about to unload on. “Everyone who’s married has a mother-in-law, unless they’re lucky enough to have married an orphan.” She smiled broadly, wistfully. “That’s what I told my kids—marry an orphan. Or I’m not coming to the wedding. Think I’m not serious? I’m deadly serious. I didn’t want them to go through what I did.”
She paused, waiting for the words to sink in. Aggie made MacKenzie think of a mischievous pixie.
“Oh, I know what you’re thinking. She’s older than dirt. Did they even have mothers-in-law when she got married? Let me tell you, they did and the one I got moonlights as a stand-in for Satan.”
She rolled her eyes, sighing dramatically as she worked the stage from one end to the other. “Just about drove me crazy. My mother-in-law, or, Stupid Woman—as she was known by her Native American name—was so dumb—” another dramatic pause before she went on to elaborate “—I’ve known buttons to have higher IQs. But that didn’t stop her from knowing how to manipulate.”
Aggie continued in the same vein for the ten minutes that had been allotted to her, gathering momentum and laughter as she went.
When she finished her set, the applause was full-bodied and enthusiastic. And no one clapped harder or more enthusiastically than MacKenzie. She clapped so hard, their small table actually shook from the vibrations.
She kept on applauding even after Aggie had left the stage. Finally, Quade placed his hand between hers, abruptly stopping her.
MacKenzie looked at him questioningly.
He nodded at her hands, withdrawing his slowly. “You might find you want to save them for something else,” he advised.
Smiling sheepishly at him, she dropped her hands to her lap.
But she felt exhilarated for the older woman. She’d been so afraid that Aggie was going to fall flat on her face. MacKenzie had seen what disappointment did to people. No matter what a performer said about being tough and being able to handle criticism, they were
all just children at heart. Children who craved acceptance, validation and praise. Thank God, that was what Aggie had received.
MacKenzie beamed at Quade. “She was good, wasn’t she?”
“Yes,” he replied patiently, “she was good.” He would have thought that was self-evident and didn’t need to be pointed out.
MacKenzie exhaled. It seemed to him as if she’d been holding her breath the entire time Aggie had been on. “Can’t tell you how relieved I am,” she said.
But then, the last contestant came out and she had to leave anything else she was going to add unsaid until later.
After fifteen minutes, Ames returned with all five of that evening’s participants.
“And now it’s time for what we’ve all been waiting for. The money.” He waited for a polite laugh to clear the air, then continued.
He held his hand over the head of each contestant, urging the audience to chose their favorite for the night.
It wasn’t even close.
While each contestant had at least one table applauding for him or her, the applause went from forced to spirited when it came to Aggie.
“Well, looks like we have ourselves a winner.” Ames handed Aggie the money. “And a repeat performer?” he asked.
Aggie beamed, placing the single bill into her pocket. “Just try and stop me.”
“Such zest, such enthusiasm.” He winked broadly at the audience. “If I were just fifteen years older—”
“You’d be dead,” Aggie quipped.
Stunned, the man laughed and, for once, the sound didn’t seem forced. “Give it up for Aggie. You saw her first here at the Laugh-Inn.”
“You were wonderful,” MacKenzie declared as the woman came to join them several minutes later. She threw her arms around Aggie in a quick embrace before allowing her to join them at the table.
Aggie’s expression was fond as the she looked at MacKenzie. “You would have said that if I was struck dumb and fell on my face.” She turned her attention to Quade. “How about you, handsome? Did I make you laugh out loud or does the act need work?”
She’s Having a Baby Page 12