It all made perfect sense, he thought wryly, until he considered the way his pulse raced at the thought of seeing Maddie again. The last time he’d felt that particular mix of anticipation and nerves, he’d been about to steal home plate in a critical game. He’d never again experienced that kind of emotional high. If he felt that way now, it was not about some perfectly normal parent-teacher conference.
“Oh, get over yourself,” he muttered. Maddie Townsend would jump through hoops for her son. She would certainly agree to have coffee with him to talk about the kid. They’d spend an hour together, two at the most. What was the big deal?
He dialed her number and cursed when the answering machine picked up. He left a terse message asking her to call him, then resigned himself to waiting.
When she hadn’t returned his call by the next day, it threw him—until he caught Ty regarding him with an unmistakably guilty expression.
He strolled over to confront the boy. “Hey, Ty,” he said, keeping his tone casual. “I left a message for your mother yesterday. I really need to speak to her.”
“About what?” Ty asked suspiciously.
“Does that really matter?”
“It does if it’s about me.”
Cal didn’t want to discuss his reason for calling Maddie.
“Right this second, the subject isn’t the point,” he told the boy. “You didn’t by any chance intercept the message, did you?”
Ty gave him a belligerent look. “So what if I did? What if I don’t want the two of you talking about me behind my back?”
“Then you did erase the message?” Cal pressed, wanting to be absolutely sure.
Ty’s expression remained unyielding, but the color in his cheeks deepened.
“We’re both worried about you,” Cal told him. “Would you like it better if I set up a meeting with you present?”
“Oh, just do whatever you want,” Ty retorted, his tone filled with disgust. “That’s what adults do, anyway.”
“We don’t have to ask your permission, that’s true,” Cal told him, keeping his own voice quiet and reasonable. “But what you think does matter to us.”
“You must not have met my dad,” Ty said. “
Nothing
matters to him.”
Before Cal could respond, Ty picked up a baseball and headed for the mound. Oddly, despite the heated exchange, he managed to get his concentration under control and pitched the best fastballs and curves he’d thrown in weeks. Once again, Cal couldn’t help but be impressed by Ty’s ability to grasp the lesson about using his emotions to help, not harm, his game. His raw, natural talent was maturing nicely. He just prayed the kid wouldn’t squander it.
“Nice job,” Cal told him when he came off the field.
Ty merely shrugged. “Whatever.”
Cal sighed. He didn’t envy any parent of a teenage boy with their raging hormones and erratic mood swings. Add in the divorce factor and it must be hell. If he could offer any insights that might be helpful to Maddie, he owed it to her to try.
He gave a self-deprecating laugh at his supposedly noble intentions. They were exactly the kind that paved the way straight to hell.
That night when Cal called Maddie again, she answered the phone, but she sounded completely frazzled.
“Maddie, it’s Cal. Is this a bad time?” he asked.
“It’s not if you can fix a leaking pipe before my kitchen floods. I called Skeeter, but he’s not available.”
He laughed. “Well, I’m not Skeeter, but I do have tools and a working knowledge of plumbing basics. I’ll be right there. Oh, and try cutting off the water before I get there.”
“Don’t you think I’ve tried that?” she said, clearly exasperated. “The knob’s frozen or I’m not strong enough to turn it.”
“Where’s Ty?”
“In his room doing his homework,” she answered. “But he’s in a funk.”
“And Kyle?”
“He’s studying at a friend’s house.”
“In that case, I’ll hurry.”
When Cal got there, he walked in the open front door and headed for the kitchen, pausing only to holler upstairs. “Ty, could you come down here? I could use your help.”
In the kitchen, Maddie regarded him with a look of such relief that he couldn’t seem to stop himself from dropping a quick kiss on her forehead. He had to work hard to ignore the drenching her T-shirt had taken and the way it clung to her breasts.
“Help has arrived,” he said and dropped onto the soaking-wet floor to reach for the cut-off valve. One hard twist did the job and the leak slowed to a drip.
“Thank goodness,” Maddie said. “I was running out of towels.”
Ty walked into the kitchen just then and the look plastered on his face was anything but friendly. “What are you doing here?” he demanded.
“A little plumbing job for your mother, something you could have done,” he said.
Ty flushed as he looked around the soaked kitchen and the mound of wet towels. “I didn’t know it was this bad,” he muttered defensively. “Sorry, Mom.”
“Well, it’s not too late to redeem yourself,” Cal told him.
“I don’t know anything about pipes and stuff,” Ty said. He cast a judgmental look at his mother. “Dad always called Skeeter.”
“Well, Skeeter’s not available,” Maddie said.
“Which is why it’s good to know how to fix something like this yourself,” Cal said. “Ty, you can hand me my tools, okay? I’ll tell you what I’m doing so you’ll know what to do next time.”
“Okay,” Ty said grudgingly, but he listened and did everything Cal asked of him.
Cal noticed that Maddie hung on his every word, as well, clearly determined not to feel helpless the next time a plumbing catastrophe struck.
Twenty minutes later, the washer in the drain had been replaced, the seal was tight and the water was back on.
“You made that look easy,” Ty said, regarding Cal with a mix of astonishment and respect.
“It’s all in knowing what to do. Think you could do it yourself?”
“Sure.” He glanced from Cal to his mother. “Are you two gonna talk about me now?”
Cal laughed at his dismayed expression. “No, I think we’ll save that for another time. Go on back to your homework. Thanks for the help.”
After he’d gone upstairs, Maddie regarded Cal curiously. “Why did he think we were going to talk about him?”
Cal explained about the intercepted message.
Maddie’s gaze followed the direction in which her son had gone. “I can’t believe he’d do something like that, not after the lecture I gave him about hiding the notes his teachers sent home for me.”
“Come on, Maddie. You were a kid once,” Cal reminded her. “Can you really blame him? He’s probably had his fill of adults doing things and making decisions behind his back.”
“You have a point,” Maddie acknowledged. “Can I get you something? Coffee? A beer? Bottled water? I made a cake earlier. It’s chocolate with fudge icing. We could take a slice and eat it outside. There’s a wonderful breeze tonight.”
“Now you’re talking my language,” Cal enthused. “I can’t recall the last time I had homemade cake.”
“You’re kidding. I would have thought every available female in town would be showing up on your doorstep with baked goods.”
“I must be putting out the wrong vibes. The ones who show up on my doorstep tend to offer themselves.”
Maddie chuckled as she cut the cake. “That must be awkward,” she commented, then studied him. “Or do you like it?”
“No, it’s awkward,” he said. “I haven’t done a lot of dating since my divorce, but I do prefer to do the asking myself.”
“Just an old-fashioned guy, huh?”
“Apparently so.” He accepted the plate from Maddie, along
with hers. “Or else once burned, twice shy. Laurie pursued me till she convinced me to marry her. I was flattered by the attention till I realized I was just the first ballplayer she managed to suck in, not the first she’d pursued. Or the last.”
“You want some milk with that?” she asked, holding up a carton.
“Perfect.”
They took the snack outside and settled into comfortable wicker chairs side by side. Cal was relieved that Maddie hadn’t jumped all over his comment about his ex-wife. He wasn’t even sure why he’d mentioned Laurie. Usually he avoided the topic of his marriage like the plague. To be sure they didn’t go down that path, he directed the conversation elsewhere.
“I missed you at Ty’s game Friday night,” he said, hoping his tone was casual and gave away nothing of the disappointment he’d felt at not seeing her.
“I wanted to be there,” she admitted. “But Bill and I made a deal. We’re going to alternate going to the games.”
“You think that will keep his girlfriend away?”
“Something like that. I assume it worked since Ty didn’t come home all worked up.”
“She wasn’t there,” Cal said, impressed by her thoughtfulness but worried about the toll the gesture must take on her. “But do you really want to miss seeing your son play?”
“Of course not, but I think this is best for now.”
Cal barely managed to contain his skepticism. It was Maddie’s decision, after all. Eventually, he released a sigh and let himself relax. “This is nice,” he said as a ceiling fan stirred the air, which had cooled slightly with the setting of the sun. “You must enjoy sitting out here and watching the world go by.”
“Usually I do. It’s nice to have neighbors stop to chat, but it can have its drawbacks.”
“Such as?”
She met his gaze. “At least half a dozen cars have driven past and slowed down since we’ve been out here. By tomorrow morning word of this will be all over town. I’m sorry,” she said. “I wasn’t thinking when I suggested we come out here. We should have gone out back or stayed in the kitchen.”
“My car’s in the driveway. We’re probably better off out in plain view. If we were anywhere else, people would just wind up speculating about what we’re doing,” Cal said realistically.
“You don’t sound especially worried either way,” she noted.
“Should I be?” He studied her, more concerned by her reaction than any impact the gossip might have on him. “Is this a problem for you, Maddie?”
She hesitated just a moment too long. It was enough to tell him she was uncomfortable with all the talk about the two of them.
Cal immediately put his plate aside and stood up. “I should go.”
“No, don’t,” she said at once. “Please, Cal. I don’t know why I let it bother me that people in this town talk about everybody’s business. I should be used to it.”
“Everyone craves a little privacy from time to time, but we’re not doing anything wrong, Maddie. I’d like to see anyone make something out of us sitting on your front porch on a lovely spring evening.”
But even as he made that reassuring statement, he knew it was wishful thinking. It was bound to come back to haunt them both. And despite Maddie’s evident discomfort, after the
pointed warning he’d had from his principal, he was pretty sure who’d feel the backlash first. What he didn’t know was why it didn’t really seem to matter.
“T
his has been a day from hell,” Helen announced as she poured margaritas for herself, Maddie and Dana Sue at what had become their Tuesday-night ritual for catching up on their lives and on the progress at their new fitness club. It was nearly the middle of April and they were all beginning to feel the pressure of that self-imposed June opening date.
“Bad day in court?” Maddie asked sympathetically. “Did opposing counsel make you look bad?”
“No, my client had a sudden series of insights into things he’d never mentioned to me before. Naturally all of these insights were designed to impress upon the court just how innocent he was.”
“Which had exactly the opposite effect,” Dana Sue guessed.
“And made me look like an idiot besides,” Helen confirmed. “I honestly don’t know what people are thinking sometimes.”
“They’re not thinking. They’re desperate,” Maddie suggested. “They’re grasping at straws.”
“Why can’t they just trust me? I know what I’m doing.” Helen took a quick gulp of her strong drink, then sighed. “Oh, well, I suppose I should be used to it by now. Nobody trusts a lawyer, not even the people who need them.”
Dana Sue exchanged a look with Maggie and grinned. “Oh, goody, a pity party. And for once it’s not about you or me.”
Helen frowned. “I’m not always the strong one,” she said. “I have my moments of insecurity and vulnerability.”
“We know that, sweetie.” Dana Sue held out a batch of her extra-hot guacamole. “Have some of this. It’ll blow all those nagging doubts right out of your head. You’ll be back to your old, confident self in a minute.”
“Worked on me,” Maddie said as Helen scooped the guacamole onto a chip. “Ever since Dana Sue made that stuff on the day you tried to convince me to partner up with you to open this spa, I’ve developed a whole new outlook on my capabilities.”
“Is the guacamole responsible for that?” Helen asked archly. “Or is it the attention of the hunky baseball coach?”
“Cal is not on the agenda tonight,” Maddie told them firmly.
“Ah, that must mean there’s something you don’t want us to know,” Helen deduced.
“I know,” Dana Sue said, grinning like a woman just itching to share a secret.
Helen beamed. “Do tell.”
Oblivious to Maddie’s frown, Dana Sue said, “Cal paid another visit to the house the other night. Those two were all cozy on the front porch with milk and cake. I’m betting it was Maddie’s famous chocolate cake with fudge frosting.” She turned to Maddie with a worried expression. “Should you even be baking things like that these days? I don’t even let myself go into the kitchen at Sullivan’s when Erik’s baking the dessert specials. I’m afraid the calories will grab on to my hips if I even walk into the room.”
Maddie scowled fiercely at the pair of them, though she doubted it would have any effect. For the moment she focused on the cake, since the subject of Cal was obviously going to be tricky.
“I didn’t bake that cake for myself,” she said piously. “The kids love it. I happened to have some left when Cal stopped by. Offering it to him was a good way to keep from eating the entire leftover cake myself.”
“But you were eating something totally decadent right out there where anyone could see,” Dana Sue teased. “I’m pretty sure that’s counterproductive to the image we’re trying to promote about being three health-conscious women.”
“Who are currently drinking margaritas and eating guacamole,” Maddie retorted. “I’d say the pot’s calling the kettle black about now.”
Helen held up a hand. “Hold it! I don’t give two figs about what Maddie was eating or our current indulgence in an alcoholic beverage. I want to know what Cal was doing over there.”
“He came to fix a leak under the kitchen sink,” Maddie said. “Satisfied? It was hardly a seductive scene.”
“A leak under the sink,” Helen said, amusement in her voice. “And Skeeter, who’s underfoot at the spa all day long, couldn’t have been persuaded to stop by to fix that leak? I know it’s not the same as having the work done by someone who looks like Cal, but Skeeter is a professional plumber.”
“Don’t you think I thought of calling Skeeter first? Thanks to all the work he’s doing for us during the day, he’s handling a lot of his other calls in the evening. I couldn’t track him down and Cal happened to be available.”
“Oh, really? He happened to be available?” Helen said skep
tically. “How did that come about? Was he just wandering down the street? Driving by?”
“He called, if you must know,” Maddie muttered.
“Does he do that often?” Helen asked.
Maddie scowled at her. “Look, just because you had a tough day in court, you don’t get to come home and try out your interrogation techniques on me.”
Helen laughed. “But you are so much more fun than most of my clients, and your social life has become downright fascinating.”
“I don’t have a social life,” Maddie maintained.
“You just have the sexiest man in Serenity under your kitchen sink,” Dana Sue said. “That’s an image that would make my day.”
“Mine, too,” Helen agreed. She fanned herself dramatically with a cloth napkin. There were no paper products on Helen’s table, not even on her outside patio.
“Then perhaps this image will perk you up even more,” Maddie said, whipping out some papers and handing them over.
“What are these?” Helen asked.
“Has your drink blurred your vision?” Maddie inquired tartly. “Those are the membership rosters as of today at five o’clock and the new employee hires, respectively.”
Dana Sue stared at her. “We have members? We have employees?”
“What do you think I’ve been doing over there?” Maddie didn’t even try to hide her exasperation. “You two had an idea. I’m making it happen. That’s what you asked me to do, remember? You wanted me to take care of all those pesky details you don’t want to bother with—hiring, marketing,
construction oversight, actually getting the doors on this business open.”
“Well, bless your heart,” Dana Sue said.
“My God, this is impressive,” Helen murmured as she flipped through the pages. “You actually stole a technician away from Chez Bella? How did you manage that? She’ll never make the tips here that she made over there.”
“No, but she’ll be in charge of the spa operation at an increase in her base salary,” Maddie said. “I know it’s stretching the budget a bit, but it’s worth it. She’s really, really good. You’re going to love her. She’s experienced and energetic and as excited as we are about starting something new from the ground up. I thought I’d ask her to join us next Tuesday, if it’s okay with you.”
“I can’t wait to meet her,” Helen said. “And look at the number of women who’ve already signed up to join. I was sure we’d have the whole place to ourselves for the first couple of months.”
“One of the joys of living in Serenity is that it doesn’t take much to get some buzz going,” Maddie told them. “Once I put out the word that folks could stop by to check the place out, every woman in town wanted to be the first to take a peek inside. And believe me, a peek is all they get. Mitch was very clear about that. I thought that would be a disadvantage, but it’s turning out to be terrific. It’s just whetting their appetites for more.”
She grinned at them. “Ready for more?”
“Bring it on,” Helen commanded.
Maddie offered them a folded brochure on pastel-pink paper. “Based on our last discussion and my conversations with Jeanette about a few limited spa services, I made a quick-
and-dirty little flyer about what we’d be offering, our introductory price list and a little bit about the three of us and why good health for women is so important. Since I started handing them out, I haven’t had one person walk away without signing up for something.” She gave them a satisfied grin. “Just wait till we announce our cooking classes. Dana Sue, maybe you could start working on a couple of ideas for those. I could get out a press release and that would widen the buzz around the region.”
“You designed this?” Helen asked incredulously, studying the brochure front and back.
“It’s just something I did in a hurry on the computer at home,” Maddie said defensively. “I know we’ll want to refine it and have it done professionally once we’ve fine-tuned everything. Jeanette has some great ideas for expanding the spa services, but we didn’t want to get too far ahead of ourselves.”
“No, no, I think it’s fabulous,” Helen said. “I had no idea you could do this kind of graphics work.”
“I took a few marketing and design classes at college,” Maddie said. “My program’s not terribly sophisticated and I’m rusty, but some of it came back to me.”
“Looks to me as if a lot of it came back to you. Next time I want something printed for my law practice, I’m coming to you,” Helen declared.
“And I want you to create new summer menus for the restaurant,” Dana Sue said eagerly. “This is really good, Maddie.”
Maddie felt tears stinging her eyes at their praise. “Come on, you guys, the flyer’s nothing special.”
“Don’t you dare say that,” Helen chided. “You’ve got a real knack for this stuff, Maddie. You’re turning out to be our secret weapon.” She held up her glass with its last few drops of
margarita. “Ladies, I think we’re going to have a success on our hands.”
“Hear, hear,” Dana Sue added.
Maddie sipped her margarita right along with them and basked in this triumph. She really was making a contribution to their partnership, after all. A few weeks ago she would never have believed it possible. When the time came, maybe she’d be able to accept her paycheck without feeling as if she hadn’t earned it.
All Maddie’s high spirits were dashed when she turned in to the driveway at home just as Bill was bringing the kids back from their evening together. Ty was out of the car practically before his father cut the engine and Kyle was right on his heels. When Bill removed Katie from her booster seat in the back, she sobbed and clung to his neck.
“Don’t go, Daddy. Please don’t go,” she begged. “You live here.”
Bill cast a helpless look in Maddie’s direction. As heartsick as she was about Katie’s pain, Maddie wasn’t going to help him out this time. She shrugged to indicate he needed to handle his daughter’s heartbreak on his own, since he was the cause of it.
Inside, she found Ty in the kitchen rummaging in the refrigerator.
“I thought your dad took you out for dinner,” she said. Not that her son wasn’t a bottomless pit, but it usually took more than an hour for a meal to wear off.
“I wasn’t hungry then,” Ty said.
“He brought Noreen again,” Kyle said, joining them. He grabbed a jar of peanut butter, some jelly and a loaf of bread.
Maddie sighed. Ty’s hatred of Noreen was wearing off on his younger brother. It had to stop. “Boys, can’t you at least give her a chance?” she pleaded. “For your dad’s sake and for your own, for that matter.”
Kyle shrugged. “She’s okay, I guess, but she acts all weird around us.”
“She’s a big phony,” Tyler added bitterly. “She pretends to be all interested in what we’re doing. She asks a whole bunch of questions and stuff.”
“Maybe she
is
interested,” Maddie suggested.
“No way,” Ty said. “She’s just doing it to impress Dad. She looks at him, not us. I know a snow job when I see one. And Dad just eats it all up. He gets mad at us for not buying it.”
Maddie hated being put in the position of advocate for Bill’s girlfriend, but she had no choice. “Guys, maybe she’s trying the best way she knows how,” she told her sons. “This is an awkward situation for her, too. Cut her some slack. Answer her questions as if you think she’s really interested. Maybe all of you can get to know each other and find some common ground.”
“I don’t want to get to know her,” Ty said heatedly. “I want her to disappear.”
Just then Bill walked into the kitchen with Katie. “Well, you can forget that,” he said harshly. “Noreen is part of my life now, which means she’s part of yours.”
“Like hell!” Ty said, storming past his father. “As far as I’m concerned, you can both disappear.”
Maddie was horrified. “Tyler Townsend, you get back here right this instant,” Maddie ordered in a tone that stopped him in his tracks. She waited till he took a cautious step back in her direction. “That is no way to speak to your father. I want you to apologize now.”
Ty stared her down and remained stubbornly silent.
“Fine, then. We’ll just add another week to your grounding.”
There was a flash of hurt in his eyes right before he took off, pounding up the stairs. Kyle gave Maddie a disappointed look, as well, a look that told her he’d expected her to understand their side better than she had.
And she did. She really did. She turned slowly to Bill. “I think it’s best if you go.”
“Can’t we talk?”
“Not tonight,” she said. “Frankly, I don’t have the stomach for it.”
“I’ll take Katie up to bed and then I’ll go.”
“No, I’ll take her,” Maddie said firmly.
“But—”
“I think you’ve done enough to upset their lives tonight. Just go and let me pick up the pieces.”
Bill regarded her with dismay. “Nothing I do anymore is right, is it?”
Maddie met his gaze evenly. “You’re your own worst enemy.”
She scooped Katie out of his arms. “Let yourself out.”
“Maddie,” he said when she was halfway out of the room.
She hesitated but didn’t turn back.
“Have lunch with me tomorrow,” he said. “Help me figure this out. Please.”
Bill had never asked for her help before, not like this. And with her kids involved, how could she deny it?
“I’ll meet you at Sullivan’s at twelve-thirty,” she said grudgingly.
“Does it have to be there?” he asked.
She knew why he objected, because Dana Sue would be on the premises watching the two of them like a hawk, but she refused to back down. “Yes, it has to be there. And try to be on time. I have a busy day tomorrow.”
He looked taken aback by that, but before he could comment, she left the room and took her exhausted daughter upstairs.
Bill hated the thought of having any kind of personal conversation with Maddie in a restaurant owned by one of her best friends. He knew Dana Sue would be hovering around them like a mother hen at the first sign he was upsetting Maddie.