Ooh, La La!, page 11
Oh, Lord. He could only hope she wouldn’t call Goldman while she was still half-drunk. He’d give her a chance to cool down, then go see her first thing in the morning. He’d throw himself on her mercy and beg forgiveness. He’d grovel at her feet, if that was what it took. He’d do anything—anything at all—to keep her from making the call that would end his career.
Chapter Seven
Steam drifted off the coffee cup in Ruth’s hand, fogging the middle pane of her kitchen window. Plucking a paper towel from its holder on the gray counter, she wiped it away and peered across the street, squinting against the morning sun. It was eight o’clock, and no one had stirred at Kate’s house yet. Kate’s Sunday paper was still in the driveway.
Ruth’s newspaper was still outside, too, lying on her front lawn beside the flowerbed that blazed with hot pink azaleas. When Pete was alive, he used to go out and bring it in, and they’d spend cozy Sunday mornings poring over it, reading interesting tidbits aloud to each other, talking and laughing over hot beignets and coffee. Dear heavens, how she missed her husband! Twenty-one years had gone by, and she still longed for their Sunday morning ritual.
The plastic bag around the thick, folded paper glistened with dew, beckoning her in the sun. Ruth longed to go out and get it, but first she’d have to shower and get dressed. She refused to set foot outside until she was fully clothed. She’d hate to be kidnapped or murdered in nothing but her pajamas and her old terry-cloth robe. You never knew what might happen when ever you set foot out of your home. Crazy people were everywhere—crazy people and criminals. All you had to do was turn on the TV or read the newspaper to know it. The news was filled with crime stories—murders, rapes, armed robberies, burglaries, assaults, car-jackings. They happened every day, often in places that appeared safe, to people who least expected it. It was a dangerous world. She hadn’t realized just how dangerous.
She wished she could convince Kate to take more care. Kate ran around oblivious, staying out till all hours, taking all kinds of chances. Just last night she’d come home in a taxi. Had she stopped to think that the taxi driver might be a serial murderer? Of course not. The possibility hadn’t even entered her mind.
Ruth shook her head and took another sip of coffee. Zack Jackson had promised to take good care of her, but had Kate stayed with him? Noooo. She’d apparently stormed off on her own after they’d had some kind of disagreement. Kate had come home looking rumpled and upset, and she’d refused to tell her mother anything.
A movement out the window caught Ruth’s eye. She rapidly set down her coffee cup and reached for the camera around her neck, then lowered it again. It was just Kate’s next-door neighbor, Mr. Hendrix, waddling down his front stoop in blue-and-white-striped pajamas so tight his pale belly gleamed through the button gaps. He reminded her of a fat walrus, with his portly build and drooping gray mustache. The nasty-looking thing completely covered his upper lip and half of his bottom one, and most of the time it looked like he’d just used it for a soup strainer. She wondered how his wife could stand to kiss him.
She used to love to kiss Pete. Ruth closed her eyes and let the memories wash over her. She’d loved the way his jaw had always felt just a little bit rough after he’d shaved. And the gentle way he’d sometimes tug on her lower lip with his teeth—that had always made her melt. And the look he’d get in his eyes when they were making love—so hot and tender and intimate and intense…
Ruth abruptly opened her eyes. Unfolding her arms, she picked up her coffee cup and stared back out the window, trying to will away the stab of pain in her chest. Pete had been dead for twenty-one years. After all this time she should know better than to allow her thoughts to drift in that direction. People had told her that the memories of him would comfort her, but they were wrong. The sweeter the memories, the more they hurt.
She watched Mr. Hendrix bend down to pick up his newspaper, his bald head glaring in the sun like a tanning bed reflector, and she deliberately focused her thoughts on the here and now. Mr. Hendrix certainly wasn’t very observant, Ruth thought disapprovingly. Why, he didn’t even look up when a gray minivan drove by. For all he knew, it could have been filled with terrorists pointing machine guns at him. He might have been mowed down right in his driveway, wearing nothing but those ridiculous, too-tight pajamas.
Well, it would serve him right. Mr. Hendrix was president of the neighborhood watch association, yet when Ruth called him about suspicious cars prowling the streets or bogus-looking plumbing trucks in people’s driveways, he never did a darn thing. In fact, he’d had the nerve to tell her that unless she saw someone actually waving a gun, forcing a door, or breaking a window, he didn’t want her to bother him anymore.
“Idiot,” Ruth muttered as she watched him shuffle back toward his house. By the time any of those things happened, it would be too late.
Prevention—that was the key. And the only way to prevent becoming the victim of a crime was to practice constant vigilance.
Ruth curled her fingers around the coffee cup and sighed. She hadn’t always felt so vulnerable. Back when Pete was alive, she’d always felt safe and secure.
Boy, had she been naive. Back then she hadn’t known how life could turn on a dime, how suddenly everything you took for granted could just be swept away. One moment her biggest worry was what to fix for supper. The next, she’d found herself a widow with a young child to raise, terrified that something awful was lurking around the corner, ready to snatch her child away, too.
Well, she wasn’t naive any longer. Now she knew that every breath was tentative, every heartbeat precarious, every good-bye potentially final.
A large black SUV turned into Kate’s driveway. Fear, heavy and smothering and all too familiar, seized a stranglehold on her, making it impossible to breathe. She reached for her telephone, and then she remembered that it was the vehicle Zack had been driving last night. Ruth placed a hand on her chest and murmured a prayer of thanks.
She watched Zack open the door, climb out, and stride purposefully up the porch steps. What was he doing at Kate’s so early on a Sunday morning? And what on earth was that dark red thing in his hand? Ruth grabbed her camera and peered through the telephoto lens to get a better look.
Oh, my goodness—flowers! He was carrying a bouquet of red roses. They were the kind they sold in grocery stores— wrapped in cellophane, with a small packet of flower preservative visible through the thin plastic. It was probably the only place one could purchase flowers on a Sunday morning.
“Well, well, well,” Ruth muttered with a smile. A man didn’t show up at a woman’s house at the crack of dawn on a Sunday morning with red roses after a business disagreement. The argument must have been personal—very personal, if the roses were any indication.
Kate and Zack Jackson. Ruth lowered the camera and picked up her coffee cup, her lips curving in a smile. What an interesting turn of events. Ruth had been wanting Kate to get out and see people. Of course, she wanted her to do it during the day in a safe part of town, while taking every possible precaution and remaining aware of who was around her at all times, but she did want Kate to have a social life. Her daughter was too young to spend all her time holed up at her office or at home. To Ruth’s way of thinking, Kate was missing out on the best part of life.
Kate needed a husband, and maybe another child or two. Ruth had seen the way she looked at babies. Just the other day, a young woman had been pushing a stroller down the sidewalk while Kate worked in her front yard flowerbed. Kate had sat back on her heels and watched them, her eyes wistful and sad, until they turned the corner and disappeared from sight.
Kate was usually standoffish with men, but she was different around Zack. Maybe he’d be able to climb the wall she’d built around her heart after that no-good jerk she’d run off with had broken it into a thousand pieces. Ruth didn’t know the whole story, but when Kate had come home from New York, she’d been like a Coke bottle flattened by a bulldozer. Time had melted down the pain and reshaped Kate into a new woman, a woman who was smarter and stronger and tougher, but Kate’s recycled life lacked a key element: a loving relationship with a man. She said she had no time for it, but Ruth knew better. Kate made no space for it.
And it was all Ruth’s fault. Guilt pressed down on her chest like a trash compactor. If she hadn’t been so restrictive, Kate never would have left. She’d only wanted to protect her child, but it had all backfired. In trying to shelter her daughter, she’d driven the girl away.
Of course, it was impossible to entirely regret the whole episode, because Skye had come out of it. The thought of her granddaughter brought a soft smile to Ruth’s lips. That child was a handful and a half—bright and creative and curious, and full of a youthful sense of invincibility. More and more, as Skye grew older, she needed the steadying influence of a father figure. She’d certainly taken to Zack.
Wouldn’t it be something if things worked out between Zack and Kate?
After all, Kate had always had a thing for him. Kate thought Zack was out of her league, but she underestimated her own appeal. When Kate let her hair down, both literally and figuratively, she was a beauty.
Maybe Zack was just what she needed to drag her out of her rut. Of course, he lived in California, and if anything serious developed between them, that meant Kate and Skye would probably move, but love would overcome obstacles like that. And there was no reason Ruth couldn’t move with them.
Ruth turned the coffee cup in her hand. She’d read that Zack was a committed bachelor, but that didn’t mean anything. All men were committed bachelors until they found the right woman. Pete had been like that when Ruth had first met him. Her lips turned up at the memory. It was funny, the way love could change what a man thought he wanted.
Ruth watched Zack punch the doorbell. He ran a hand through his hair, then shifted the bouquet from his right hand to his left.
He looked anxious—nervous, almost.
Ruth grinned. Good. If he was nervous, that meant he cared. In all too many relationships, there was a Carer and a Caree. That had been the case in Kate’s first relationship; Ruth was sure of it. Although her daughter had never said so. Kate had never said anything about Wayne, though, and she looked so emotionally pained whenever his name was mentioned that Ruth had never pressed. All Kate had ever said was that things hadn’t worked out. It made Ruth’s heart ache, the way her daughter’s bright eyes dimmed whenever the subject arose. Whatever had happened, it had wounded her so deeply that to this day, Kate wouldn’t talk about it.
Well, she was going to have to talk about it soon, though. Skye’s curiosity about her father was intensifying every day. What kind of man could have a daughter and not want to see her? Kate had assured Skye that her father loved her—that the only reason he didn’t come around was because he was angry with Kate—but Ruth didn’t buy it. No disagreement in the world would have kept Pete from his child. No, there had to be more to it than anger with Kate, but Ruth tried hard not to pry. She’d driven her child away once, and she didn’t want to do it again.
Ruth took another sip of coffee and watched Zack fidget on Kate’s porch. It was funny, how Kate would take risks with her physical safety but guard her heart like Fort Knox. To Ruth’s way of thinking, Kate had it all backwards.
Zack punched the doorbell again. Kate had said she was an early riser, so he’d come over as soon as the sun was up. He’d barely slept a wink all night for worrying about her calling Goldman.
He owed her an apology—big time. He couldn’t believe how badly he’d mismanaged the situation. Not only had he misjudged Kate and her tolerance for alcohol, but he’d practically made love to her on the hood of a car on a public street, then let her see that blasted letter. He couldn’t blame her for thinking he was a lower life-form than plankton.
She was unlikely to believe the truth: he’d only intended to get her relaxed, not blitzed. It was even more unlikely that she’d believe he hadn’t intended to convince her to sign the letter while she was drunk. And as for that kiss… What the hell had he been thinking?
He hadn’t been thinking—that was the problem. The explosiveness of Kate’s response had knocked him for a loop. When she had wound her legs around him, his brain had quit functioning and lust had taken over. Pure, hot, hungry, unbridled lust.
His behavior bewildered him. She had an excuse—she’d been drunk. What was his excuse? He never lost control—especially not in public. Even in bed, he prided himself on his restraint and self-control, on his ability to ensure that his partner had as good a time as he did.
What was it about this woman that sent him into such a frenzy?
It probably wasn’t even anything about her; it probably was just the fact that he hadn’t been with a woman in several months, and he had a backlog of hormones just rarin’ to go.
He’d chalked his lack of libido up to a preoccupation with work. He’d been pouring all his energy into trying to save his career from the big trash heap in the sky, and he figured he was just too stressed out to have much interest in sex. Now that his career was back on track, it was natural for his sex drive to return as well.
Well, the doc was exactly the wrong person to release it on. His mind must be playing some sort of masochistic trick on him, making him lust after an uptight, suit-clad bun-headed brainiac intent on ruining his career.
He’d made a terrible mistake, and he was here to plead or beg or do whatever it took to convince her not to call Goldman. He prayed that she hadn’t already done so.
Zack glanced at his watch and wondered if he’d come too early. Kate was likely to have one hell of a hangover this morning. Maybe she was sleeping in. Maybe this wasn’t the best time to pay a call. Maybe he should come back later.
He’d decided to do just that when the door squeaked open. Skye stood in the doorway, wearing a bulky yellow terry-cloth robe over blue flannel pajamas and huge pink slippers that looked like lop-eared bunnies. Her face lit in a big grin. “Hey!”
“Hey, yourself. Is your mother up?”
“Sure. She’s in the shower.” Skye stepped back and opened the door wider. “Come on in. Want some Froot Loops?”
“No thanks. But I’d take some coffee if you have any.”
“I think we still have some. Mom made a full pot this morning, but she’s been gulping it like crazy. She said she had a headache.”
I bet she does. Zack followed Skye’s bunny feet into the kitchen. The girl opened a cabinet and pulled out a mug printed with the message YOU’VE GOT TO KISS A LOT OF TOADS TO FIND A PRINCE. She handed it to Zack, then gestured to a Mr. Coffee machine on the white formica counter. “Help yourself.”
“Thanks.” Zack set down his tissue-wrapped bouquet.
Skye picked it up and sniffed the roses as Zack poured his coffee. “Did you and Mom have a fight or something?”
Zack’s fingers tightened on the cup handle. “Why? Did she say we did?”
“No. But you’re bringing her roses… and when I asked her if she had fun last night, she said she didn’t want to talk about it, and her face got all weird.”
“Weird, how?”
“Well, her brow got all frowned up and her mouth got pinched and her eyes looked like they were shooting lasers or something.”
Not a good sign. Zack poured himself a cup of coffee. “Do you happen to know if she made any phone calls last night or this morning?”
“I don’t know. Why? Who do you think she might have called?”
“Oh, nobody.”
“Grown-ups.” Skye rolled her eyes. “And you guys think kids are weird.”
Zack grinned and took a deep sip of coffee.
Skye hopped up on the counter and dangled her bunny feet. “So, did you talk Mom into letting me be in your movie?”
Oh, no. He wasn’t going to get into that discussion again. “That’s between you two. I was out of line to make the offer without clearing it with your mother first.”
“You’ve got to talk her into it. She won’t listen to me.”
“What makes you think she’d listen to me any better?”
“She likes you.”
“Don’t bet on it,” Zack muttered.
“Skye, have you seen my black bra?” called a familiar voice from the hallway.
Zack saw Kate at the same moment she saw him. They both froze. He heard her sharp intake of breath—or maybe it was his own. She stared at him, her lips parted.
Zack stared back. She was clad in a green towel and apparently nothing else. Her hair was wet, her face was pink and freshly scrubbed, and her legs… Zack swallowed. Good Lord. Her legs were enough to give a man hot chills and cold sweats. Long and slender and smooth, they had a soft sheen to them, as if she’d put some kind of lotion on them. The mirror in the hallway behind her afforded him a view of her back. Her shoulders had that sheen, as well. The thought of Kate slathering lotion all over her naked body made it suddenly hard to breathe.
“What are you doing here?” Kate demanded, taking a step back and drawing the towel tighter around her.
He jerked his eyes away from her legs. “I, uh, came by to apologize.”
“I knew it!” Skye crowed triumphantly. “I knew you guys had a fight!”
“Kate, we need to talk,” Zack said.
Her spine grew straight and her chin stubbornly tilted up. “There’s nothing for us to talk about.”
“Oh yes there is.”
“I disagree. And this is a most inopportune moment.”
Christ. Who said things like “most inopportune”?
“In case you hadn’t noticed,” Kate continued, “I happen to be half-dressed.”
Zack couldn’t help but grin. “Oh, I noticed, all right.”
“Sheeze, Mom, you’re nowhere near half-dressed,” Skye chimed in. “Heck, you’re not dressed at all!”
Kate shot her a near lethal look.
“Why don’t you throw on some clothes and I’ll take you somewhere for coffee,” Zack suggested.
