“Oh, yeah,” he said. “I forgot you were living in Latte Land.”
“Took me three years to learn how to order, and then they claimed they couldn't understand my Jersey accent.”
“You don't have a Jersey accent.”
“In Seattle I do.”
“Actually you have a great speaking voice.”
Don't fight him, Maddy. For once in your life accept a compliment like an adult.
“Thanks,” she said, amazed at how difficult that single word could be. “After I lost my accounting job, I kind of fell into doing voice-overs for a used-car lot in Bellevue.”
“You told me. Did you enjoy it?”
She laughed. “I loved it! I was a deejay in college, and for awhile I'd thought about ditching accounting and going into broadcasting.”
“Why didn't you?”
“I don't really know. I'm not a terribly ambitious woman. It feels like I blinked my eyes and found myself in a navy blue suit and carrying a briefcase.”
“Can't imagine you in a navy blue suit.”
“I had three of them,” she said, shaking her head at the memory. “Plus one charcoal and one black. What the well-dressed accountant will wear.”
“You're not my idea of an accountant.”
“I was one,” she said, “and I was damn good.”
“Why'd you leave?”
“I didn't,” she said. “The company was a dot-com telecommunications company andâ” She did a first-rate impression of an exploding bomb. “Took our 401(k)s, our severance pay, everything. And the worst part was we weren't the only ones. We went from a thriving industry to nothing overnight. I cried for three days straight, and then when I finished crying, I realized there was no place to go. So I decided to switch gears. I went on a few auditions after that, but nothing much came out of it beyond the car dealership gig.” She gave a self-deprecating laugh. “Although I'm proud to say I was the official voice of Hartz Electronics in the Pine Brook Shopping Center.”
“Another commercial?”
“Well, not exactly. I taped their voice-mail messages for them.”
He laughed out loud, drawing curious glances from the other patrons. “Are you going to look for voice-over work here?”
“Doing what?” she countered. “Voice-mail messages for my mother?”
“You're midway between New York and Philadelphia. There has to be something out there.”
“I'm supposed to be working with my mother,” she reminded him. “And besides, I'll be moving on before too long. No sense starting something I won't be around to finish.”
“Gina said you were given a fifty-fifty share of the Candlelight.”
“Gina's been listening to her mother. Rose and I have nothing formal set up. Right now I'd say we're both trying to decide if we'll make it to the end of the year without killing each other.” Considering it was only December 6, it was anybody's guess.
“So you're not staying.”
“Given my track record with my mother, it's not very likely. Besides, I can't see spending the rest of my life sharing the bathroom with total strangers.” She told him about her midnight encounter with Mr. Loewenstein in the upstairs hallway and had him laughing so hard he couldn't speak.
She wondered if Gina had ever rendered him speechless. Then she recalled some of Gina's stories about her sexual exploits, and she found herself wishing she hadn't demanded every single juicy detail, details that were so hot she half-expected the authorities to confiscate her computer before her e-mails went up in flames. Gina had probably rendered Aidan O'Malley speechless or unconscious. Take your pick.
Julie popped up again, this time with a huge platter of pancakes and the trimmings for Aidan and a toasted blueberry muffin for Maddy.
“No butter,” Julie said as she slid the plate in front of Maddy.
“Thanks.”
“Lots of butter,” Julie said to Aidan as she deposited his plate.
“Syrup?”
“I'm way ahead of you.” She plucked three plastic tubs of imitation maple syrup from the depths of her apron pocket and put them down on the table. “Enjoy, guys.”
Maddy took a bite of her muffin, chewed, then swallowed. “It needs butter.”
He gestured toward the mountain of butter melting atop his stack of pancakes. “Help yourself.”
Normally Maddy wasn't a
help yourself
kind of woman. She had never so much as grabbed a French fry from Tom's plate in all those years they were together. Then again Tom wasn't exactly a diner-and-French-fries kind of man. Still she felt surprisingly comfortable with Aidan, despite the definite surge of cascading hormones every time their eyes locked over the salt and pepper shakers. The cascading hormones were a definite bonus. Not that his were likely cascading in return. That would have been too good to be true. He was probably just waiting for her to whip out the samovar so they could compare notes.
Too bad,
she thought as she dipped the delicately browned edge of her muffin into his golden pool of butter. She could easily get used to the butter, the blueberries, and the man.
Â
THE SECOND SHE sank her perfect teeth into a juicy blueberry and sighed with delight, he knew he was a goner. Up until that moment he had been able to explain away the commotion inside his chest as a combination of hunger and sleep deprivation, but now he knew it for what it was.
One of the DiFalco cousins. The one who had taken off for Seattle right after high school and never looked back. The one with the wild mane of caramel-colored hair, eyes the color of a stormy sea, and a body that made clothes a crime against nature. She was tall, voluptuous, and opinionated. She had the kind of laugh that made you want to take a pratfall just so you could hear the sound. Her sense of humor was still intact even if those stormy eyes never quite caught up.
She was as direct in person as she was in e-mail. She loved her kid the way a kid deserved to be loved. Hell, she gave up the life she had built in Seattle to move back to New Jersey just to try and make her daughter happy again. He had watched her with Hannah at the bus stop and the calendar flipped back a dozen years and it was Kelly with the weepy eyes as he told her the day would be over before she knew it and he would be right there waiting for her in the afternoon. He had grown up with his feet planted firmly on shifting sands, taking his cues from his mother's moods, his father's sorrows, his grandmother's distance, and never quite getting it right. He swore the home he built for his daughter would have a solid and steady foundation.
You did what you had to do. You put your kid and her needs first and worked backward from there. And when you saw the beautiful young woman she had suddenly become, you knew it was all worthwhile.
He wanted to tell Maddy all of that and more, but he'd be damned if he knew why. She would learn it for herself soon enough. He had heard stories about why Maddy and Hannah's father had split up, that the guy already had grandchildren older than Hannah and wasn't looking to start over again and nothing Maddy could say or do could convince him to stick around.
It seemed to Aidan that the kid always paid the price for his parents' mistakes. You paid for it with loneliness and the sense that there was something you could have said or done that might have made a difference. If only you had brushed your teeth before bed, put your toys away, done your homework without being asked ten times, maybe then you would have a family.
He had the feeling Maddy knew that, too.
He busied himself with his pancakes while she finished up her blueberry muffin and flagged Julie down for more coffee for Maddy.
“You?” Julie asked, the coffeepot hovering over his mug.
He shook his head. “I'm at my limit.”
“Wimp,” Julie muttered as she walked away.
Maddy checked her watch. She didn't make a show of it, but he took note. It was pushing nine. He had to start two pots of steak soup, a mega meatloaf, and a dozen shepherd's pies. And then whip up a vat of Irish stew and mac and cheese for the guys at the firehouse. She probably had even more to do.
He reached for the manila envelope next to his empty coffee mug.
Â
MADDY WANTED TO crawl under the table and stay there for the rest of the morning. Checking her watch was a nervous habit she had developed as a kid. She hadn't even realized she'd done it until she saw his eyes zero in on her wrist and she sensed a change in the atmosphere between them. He probably thought she was counting the minutes until breakfast was over when nothing could be further from the truth.
“So let's see the magic lamp,” he said, sliding the photocopy of the newspaper clipping across the table to her.
She took a sip of coffee, then wiped her mouth with the edge of her paper napkin. “Good idea,” she said, then reached down into the Macy's shopping bag and pulled out the samovar. She placed it on the table between them, then pulled off the tissue-paper covering. “So what do you think?”
At first he didn't say anything. His eyes narrowed slightly and he reached out with his right forefinger to trace the curve of the handle. She tried to keep her expression impassive, but it was impossible.
“What do you think?” she asked again, unable to mask her excitement.
He met her eyes. “You see it, too?”
“I couldn't believe it when your scan arrived. I thought it was some kind of joke.”
“No joke,” he said. “It's a flat-out dead ringer for the one in the picture.”
“I think so, too.” She willed herself to stay cool. “Do you think it could be the same one your grandmother had in her restaurant?”
“Hard to imagine two of them showing up in Paradise Point, isn't it?”
“I can't sell it to you,” Maddy said, “if that's what this is all about. I told you that from the start.”
“Who asked you to sell it?” He looked annoyed, which annoyed her. What right did he have to get testy about
her
samovar? “I just want to know if it's the same one my grandmother had back in 1952.”
“You think the hurricane swept the samovar out to sea in 1952, then a magic wave swept it back into shore more than fifty years later?”
“Yeah,” he said. “That's exactly what I'm thinking.”
She couldn't help it. She burst out laughing. “I think you're nuts.”
“Right,” he said, his annoyance fading into a half-smile. “And you're the one who thinks it's a magic lamp.”
“If I thought it was a magic lamp, do you think I'd be sitting here at a diner in New Jersey in
December
? I'd be in Hawaii and I'd have much better legs.”
He pretended to peer under the table. “Nothing wrong with your legs.”
“I'm wearing pants,” she said, laughing again. “You can't even see my legs.”
“We couldâ” He stopped dead. “Sorry,” he said with a rueful grin. “Force of habit.”
“You asked me a few personal questions before,” Maddy said. “Now it's my turn.”
“You can ask,” he said, “but I'm not guaranteeing I'll answer.”
“Fair enough.” She leaned back in her bench seat and looked him straight in the eye. “Was it serious between you and Gina?”
“You know about Gina and me?”
“I don't know anything,” she said. “That's why I'm asking.”
“We went out a few times about six or seven years ago. She was looking to get married. I was looking not to get married. No surprise when it didn't work out.”
“That's it?”
“That's all I know about.” He frowned. “Why? What did she say?”
“She didn't say anything. Somebody mentioned something at the bus stop this morning, and I wondered if you two were still seeing each other.”
“Gina's married.”
“Listen,” Maddy said, “I love her like a sister, but I'm not blind to her faults.”
“I took Denise out a few times, too,” he said.
Maddy struggled to keep her jaw from bouncing off the tabletop. “Denise was never single for more than four weeks between husbands.”
“I never said it was a long-term relationship.”
“Who else did you see?”
He named three of her cousins and at least a dozen of her old classmates.
“You're kidding.”
“Nope.”
“You slept with all of them?” The question was out there before she had a chance to censor herself.
“No,” he said, looking a little annoyed. “Not a smart thing to do these days.”
“Maybe it never was a smart thing to do.” Another rapid-fire response before she had the chance to get her brain in gear.
“No argument there.”
“Gina?”
He didn't answer.
“Denise?”
He still didn't answer.
“Pat?”
Silence.
“You're not going to tell me, are you?”
“Nope.”
“That's not fair.”
“It is to them.”
If she had liked him a little before, she liked him a whole lot more now.
“How do you find time for a social life?” she asked him. “Since Hannah, I have trouble finding time to wash my hair.”
“My family,” he said, as if that explained it all. “They figured watching Kelly was a small price to pay to find a new mother for her. They kicked my ass back out there before I knew what hit me.”
“And now that your daughter's almost grown and you don't have to worry about who's watching her anymoreâ”
“I don't go out anymore.”
“At all?”