Tangled Up In You

Chapter 16

Meg raised her fingers to her temples and pushed, like she had as a kid. “She shouldn’t be allowed to get away with this.” The ends of her pink robe flapped about her ankles as she paced her small kitchen. It was nine a.m. and luckily her day off work. Travis had spent the night with Pete and was blissfully unaware of the turmoil brewing within his home.

“She shouldn’t be allowed to live here,” Meg ranted. “Our lives were fine until she showed up. She’s just like her mother. Moving to town and messing up our lives.”

After Mick had left Maddie’s house, he’d gone back to work and tried to ignore the anger and chaos in his soul. After the bar closed, he stayed and worked on business. He looked over his bank records and wrote out payroll checks. He checked inventory and made notes on what he needed to order, and after the clock struck eight, he drove to his sister’s.

“Someone should do something.”

Mick set his coffee on the old oak table where he’d eaten dinner as a kid and sat in a chair. “Tell me you’re not going to do anything.”

She stopped and looked over at him. “Like what? What can I do?”

“Promise you won’t go anywhere near her.”

“What is it you think I’m going to do?”

He simply looked at her, and she seemed to deflate before his eyes.

“I’m not like Mom. I’m not going to hurt anyone.”

No, just herself. “Promise,” he insisted.

“Fine. If it will make you feel better. I promise that I’m not going to burn her house down.” She laughed quietly and sat in the chair next to him.

“That’s not funny, Meg.”

“Maybe not, but no one got hurt that night, Mick.”

Only because he’d shown up in time to pull her out of their farmhouse the night she’d torched it. She’d always insisted that she hadn’t been trying to kill herself. To this day, he wasn’t sure he believed her.

“I’m not crazy, you know.”

“I know,” he said automatically.

She shook her head. “No, you don’t. Sometimes you look at me and I think you see Mom.”

That was so close to the truth that he didn’t even bother denying it. “I just think that sometimes your emotions are over the top.”

“To you they are, but there is a big difference between being an emotional person who rants and raves as opposed to a person who takes a gun and kills herself or anyone else.”

He thought calling her outbursts “being an emotional person” an understatement, but he didn’t want to argue. He stood and walked to the sink. “I’m tired and going home,” he said and poured his coffee down the drain.

“Get some sleep,” his sister ordered.

He grabbed his keys off the kitchen table and Meg rose to hug him good-bye.

“Thanks for coming by and telling me everything.”

He hadn’t told Meg everything. He hadn’t mentioned that he’d had sex with Maddie, nor that he’d fallen for her. “Tell Travis I’ll come by tomorrow morning and take him fishing.”

“He’ll like that.” She rose and walked him to the door. “You’ve been so busy with work lately that you boys haven’t had much time together.”

He’d been busy, but mostly busy chasing after Maddie Dupree. No. Maddie Jones.

“Take a shower,” she called after him as he made his way to his truck. “You look like crap.”

Which he figured was perfect, since he felt like crap. He jumped in his truck and ten minutes later he stood in his bedroom, wondering how his life had gone to complete hell.

He pulled his shirt over his head and caught a scent of Maddie. Last night she’d smelled like coconut and lime and this morning was the first time since he’d met her that he didn’t want to bury his face in her neck. No, he wanted to wring her neck.

He tossed the shirt in the laundry basket in his closet and took off his shoes. Standing in her kitchen last night, realizing who she was, had hit him like a blow to the side of the head. If that hadn’t been good enough for her, she’d held up the bloody photo of her mother, which finished him off with a roundhouse kick to the gut. She’d beat the hell out of him and he’d gone down for the count.

He took off his shoes and undressed. He was a fool. For the first time in his life, he’d truly fallen hard for a woman. So hard it ate at his chest like acid. Only she wasn’t who she’d led him to believe she was. She was Maddie Jones. Daughter of his father’s last girlfriend. It didn’t matter that she didn’t see Loch when she looked at him or that she looked nothing like her mother. It really didn’t matter that she’d lied to him, or at least not as much as knowing who she really was mattered. He’d spent most of his life fighting to free himself from the past, only to fall for a woman deeply tangled up in it.

Mick walked into the bathroom and turned on the shower. Evidently he was more like Loch than he’d ever thought, and that just pissed him off. From almost the beginning, he’d known there was something about Maddie. Something that drew him in. He hadn’t known what it was and couldn’t have even guessed. Now he understood, and it sat in his gut like hot lead. He understood that it was the same single-minded attraction his father must have felt for her mother. The same fascination that made him want to see her smile, watch her laugh, and listen to her whisper his name as he gave her pleasure. The same sort of calm his father must have felt when he was near her mother. As if everything else dropped away and his vision cleared, and he saw what he wanted even before he knew he’d wanted anything.

He stepped into the shower and let the warm water run over his head. For his father to have been planning to leave his mother for Alice Jones, Loch must have been in love with her. Mick understood that too. He was in love with Maddie Jones. He hated to admit it now. He was ashamed and embarrassed, but when she’d opened her door last night and he’d seen her standing there holding her cat, his heart had felt like the sun was warming him up from the inside. And he’d known. Known what it felt like for a man to love a woman. Known it in every cell in his body. Every beat of his heart. Then he’d carried her to her bed, and he’d known what it felt like to make love to a woman, and he’d been amazed.

Then she’d ripped his heart from his chest.

Mick tipped his head back and closed his eyes. He’d seen and done things in his life that he regretted. Experienced heart-wrenching pain at the deaths of fellow soldiers. But the things he’d done and experienced were not as bad as the regret and pain he felt over loving Maddie.

There was only one thing to do. He’d told her that he hadn’t thought about her mother and that he wasn’t going to think about her, and that was exactly what he planned to do. He was going to forget about Maddie Jones.

Meg opened her front door and looked into Steve Castle’s calm blue eyes. She’d taken a shower and he’d arrived just as she’d finished drying her hair. “I didn’t know who else to call.”

“I’m glad you called me.”

He stepped inside and followed her into the kitchen. He wore a pair of jeans and T-shirt with a cornucopia and the words everybody hates vegetarians across his chest. Over a fresh pot of coffee, she told him what she’d learned from Mick.

“The whole town is going to find out, and I don’t know what to do.”

Steve wrapped his big hand around the mug and raised it to his mouth. “Doesn’t sound like there is anything you can do except hold your head up,” he said, then took a drink.

“How can I?” The last time she’d talked with Steve about Maddie Dupree Jones, he’d given good advice and made her feel better. “This is just going to keep everyone talking about what my mother did and all my father’s affairs.”

“Probably, but that isn’t your fault.”

She stood and moved to the coffeepot. “I know, but that won’t keep people from talking about me.” She reached for the coffee, then refilled Steve’s mug and hers.

“No. It won’t, but while they’re talking, you just keep telling yourself that you didn’t do anything wrong.”

She returned the coffeepot and leaned a hip against the counter. “I can tell myself that, but it won’t make me feel better.”

Steve placed a hand on the kitchen table and stood. “It will if you believe it.”

“You don’t understand. It’s so humiliating.”

“Oh, I understand about humiliation. When I returned from Iraq, my wife was pregnant and everyone knew the baby wasn’t mine.” He moved toward her, his limp barely noticeable. “Not only did I have to deal with the loss of my leg and my wife, but I had to deal with her being unfaithful with an army buddy.”

“Oh, my God, I’m sorry, Steve.”

“Don’t be. My life was hell for a while, but it’s good now. Sometimes you have to go taste the shit to appreciate the sugar.”

Meg wondered if that was some sort of army saying.

He reached for her hand. “But you can’t appreciate the sugar until you let go of all the bad shit.” He brushed his thumb across the inside of her wrist and the hair on her arms tingled. “What your parents did didn’t have anything to do with you. You were a kid. Just like my wife screwing my buddy didn’t have anything to do with me. Not really. If she was unhappy because I was gone, there were other, more honorable ways to handle it. If your mama had been unhappy because your daddy was having affairs, there were other ways to handle that too. What my wife did wasn’t my fault. Just like what your mama did wasn’t your fault. I don’t know about you, Meg, but I don’t plan on paying the rest of my life for other people’s dumb-ass mistakes.”

“I don’t want to.”

He squeezed her hand and somehow she felt it in her heart. “Then don’t.” He pulled her toward him and placed his free hand on the side of her neck. “One thing I know for sure is that you can’t control what other people say and do.”

“You sound like Mick. He thinks I can’t get over the past because I dwell on it.” She turned her face into his palm.

“Maybe you need something in your life to take your mind off the past.”

When she’d been married to Travis’s daddy, she hadn’t let it bother her as much as it did these days.

“Maybe you need someone.”

“I have Travis.”

“Besides your son.” He lowered his face and spoke against her lips. “You’re a beautiful woman, Meg. You should have a man in your life.”

She opened her mouth to speak, but she couldn’t remember what to say. It had been a very long time since a man had told her she was beautiful. A long time since she’d kissed anyone but her son. She pressed her mouth against Steve’s and he kissed her. A warm gentle kiss that seemed to go on forever within the sunlight spilling into the kitchen. And when it was over, he cupped her face in his rough hands and said, “I’ve wanted to do that for a long time.”

Meg licked her bottom lip and smiled. He made her feel beautiful and wanted. Like more than just a waitress, a mom, and a woman who’d just hit forty. “How old are you, Steve?”

“Thirty-four.”

“I’m six years older than you.”

“Is that a problem?”

She shook her head. “No, but it might be a problem for you.”

“Age is not a problem.” He slid his hands to her back and pulled her against his chest. “I just have to figure out a way to tell Mick that I want his sister.”

Meg smiled and wrapped her arms around his neck. She knew there were a lot of things Mick kept to himself. Most recently his relationship with Maddie Jones. “Let him figure it out on his own.”