Tangled Up In You

Chapter 4

“Fire in the hole!” Louie shouted and set off several screeching rockets, saving Maddie the effort of thinking up a half-truth or full-out lie. Four rockets flew up instead of at her head and her pulse steadied.

These rockets were a little bigger than the last and exploded in small bursts of color. Louie had broken out heavier artillery, yet still no one seemed in the least worried. No one except Maddie.

“I want to stay down there,” Travis grumbled as he, Mick, and Pete moved up the steps of the deck.

“The big show’s about to start,” Mick said, “and you know kids have to move where it’s safe.”

Big show? She raised her wine and drained the glass. She wondered if Mick was going to put Tanya out of her misery and button his shirt. Sure, it had been hot earlier, but it was getting fairly nippy now.

“Donald is a kid,” Pete complained.

“Donald is fourteen,” Lisa said. “If you’re going to argue, you can go sit by your grandmother and Tia Narcisa.”

Pete quickly plopped his behind down on the steps. “I’ll sit here.” Travis sat next to him, but neither appeared happy about being confined to the deck.

“Hey, Mick,” Tanya called out to him.

He glanced up from Travis, but his gaze met Maddie’s. His blue eyes looked into hers for several heartbeats before he turned his attention to the petite woman on Maddie’s left. “Hey, there, Tanya. How’s it going?”

“Good. I still have some Bushmills Malt 21. What are you doing after the show?”

“I’ve got to take Travis home, then head to work,” he said. “Maybe some other time.” He moved past them to a cooler and bent at the waist. He lifted the white lid and his shirt fell open. Naturally. “Yo, Travis and Pete,” he called out. “Do you boys want a root beer?”

As one, the two boys turned at the waist. “Yeah.”

“Sure.”

Ice and water sloshed in the cooler as he grabbed two cans of Hires and lobbed them into the boys’ waiting hands. He pulled out a Red Bull, then closed the cooler’s lid.

“Maddie, have you met Mick Hennessy?” Lisa asked.

Out of habit, she held out her hand, “Yes, we’ve met.”

He wiped his hand on his pants, then took her fingers in his cool wet palm. “Kill any mice today?”

“No.” His thumb brushed her bare ring finger and he smiled. Intentional or not, she didn’t know, but the light touch spread hot itchy little tingles to her wrist. It was the closest she’d come to real sex in years. “No dead mice yet, but I’m hoping they’re experiencing death rattles even as we speak.” She pulled her hand back before she forgot who he was and why she was in town. Once he found out, she doubted there would be any more handshakes and tingles. Not that she particularly wanted either.

“Call an exterminator,” Tanya said.

Maddie had called an exterminator and he couldn’t get to her house for a month.

“Be careful who you call,” Lisa warned. “Carpenters and exterminators work on Miller time around here and they have a habit of just up and leaving at three o’clock.”

“I take it three o’clock is Miller time.”

“Pretty much.” Lisa’s mother-in-law called her name and she grimaced. “Excuse me.”

“Better her than me,” Delaney uttered as Lisa walked away.

“I could give you the number of someone who might actually arrive when he says he will.” Mick popped the top to his Red Bull. “And stay until the job is finished.”

“Have your husband or boyfriend take care of your mice problem,” Tanya suggested.

She looked at Tanya and suddenly didn’t get a nice neighborly vibe. The energy had changed since Mick had walked onto the deck. She wasn’t sure, but she guessed that Tanya wasn’t going to be her new B.F.F. “Don’t have a boyfriend and I’ve never been married.”

“Never?” Tanya raised a brow as if Maddie were a freak, and Maddie would have laughed if it wasn’t so ridiculous.

“Hard to believe, isn’t it?” she said. Tanya need not worry. The very last man on the planet she would ever get involved with was Mick Hennessy. Despite his nice abs and killer happy trail. “I’m such a great catch.”

Mick chuckled and took a drink of his Red Bull. Through the darkening shadows of nightfall, she could just see the laugh lines creasing the corners of his blue eyes as he looked at her over the silver can.

She smiled back and decided it was past time to change the subject. “Did you have to toss Darla out of Mort’s on her bare behind?”

He lowered the can and sucked moisture from his bottom lip. “Nah. She behaved.”

“Are women still tossing their panties?” Delaney asked.

“Not as much. Thank God.” Mick shook his head and grinned, a flash of white against the dark. “Believe me, tossing drunk, half-naked women from my bar isn’t as fun as it sounds.”

Maddie laughed. Never in a million years would she have thought she’d find Mick Hennessy so utterly likable. “How often does that happen?” Then again, he was his father’s son.

Mick shrugged. “Mort’s used to be a really wild place before I took over, and some people are having a hard time adjusting.”

“They’ve never adjusted to Jackson’s Texaco taking over for Grover’s Gas and Go, and that was about six years ago.” Delaney drew in a breath and let it out slowly. “My feet are killing me.”

“Fire in the hole!” Louie yelled seconds before sending up another barrage. Maddie spun around and her gaze flew to the rockets soaring straight up.

Behind her, Mick’s deep laughter was almost drowned out by the rockets’ pop-pop-pops. When she turned back, he’d moved to help Delaney find a chair. Tanya trailed after them and Maddie wasn’t sorry to see her go. The woman had gone from perfectly pleasant to bitchy over a man, something Maddie had never understood. There were other available men on the planet, why get all uptight over one? Especially if that one had a reputation for never getting involved. For loving and leaving. Not that Maddie ever held that against anyone. She didn’t understand women who got so attached so easily. After a few dates or good sex, they were in love. How did that happen? How was that even possible?

Sofie Allegrezza and her friends moved to the railing beside Maddie for a better view of her father’s fireworks show. Maddie set her glass on the railing and watched Louie load up the three big mortar tubes. She’d never needed a man in order to feel good about herself or to make her life complete. Not like her mother.

“Fire in the hole.” This time there was an audible whoosh seconds before the three rounds shot from tubes and exploded with three loud booms. Startled, Maddie jumped back and collided with something solid. A pair of big hands grabbed her arms as green, gold, and red bursts of fire rained down toward the lake. “Sorry.” She turned her head and looked up into the shadows resting on Mick’s face.

“Not a problem.” Instead of pushing her away, he held her right where she’d landed. “Tell me something.”

“What?”

He lowered his face and spoke just above her ear. “If you’re a great catch, why haven’t you been caught?”

His warm breath touched the side of her head and slipped down her neck. “Probably for the same reason you haven’t.”

“Which is?”

“You don’t want to be caught.”

“Honey, all women want to be caught.” His hands slid to her elbows, then up again, bunching her sweatshirt. “All women want a white wedding, picket fence, and a baby maker.”

“Have you met all women?”

She thought she felt him smile. “I’ve met my share.”

“So I hear.”

“You shouldn’t believe everything you hear.”

“And you shouldn’t believe all women want you for their own personal baby maker.”

“You don’t want me for your own personal baby maker?”

“Shocking, isn’t it?”

He laughed. A low rumble against the side of her head. “You smell good.” Against her back, she felt him draw in a deep breath.

“German chocolate cake.”

“What?”

“I smell like chocolate cake body scrub.”

“I haven’t had chocolate cake in a long time.” She’d been mistaken about his handshake being like the best sex she’d had in years. This, his soft breath in her hair and his hands on her arms, was practically orgasmic. Which she figured made her particularly pathetic. “You’re making me hungry,” he said next to her ear.

“For cake?”

His hands slid to her shoulders, then back down to her elbows. “For starters.”

“Uncle Mick,” Travis called out as he stood. “When are the town fireworks going to start?”

Mick looked up. His hands tightened a fraction, then dropped to his sides. “Any minute,” he answered and took a step back. As if on cue, several enormous booms shook the ground and the night sky lit up with huge bursts of color. Sofie Allegrezza pushed play on her small sound system and Jimi Hendrix’s sonic guitar wailed “The Star Spangled Banner” into the night. Forest critters scrambled for cover as around the lake fireworks exploded from the beaches, competing with the town’s pyrotechnic eruptions.

Welcome to Truly. The original shock and awe.

“Did you have fun, Travis?”

A huge yawn came from the other side of the dark truck. “Yeah. Maybe next year I can blow off bigger fireworks.”

“Maybe, if you stay out of trouble.”

“Mom said if I stay out of trouble, I can get a puppy.”

Mick turned the Ram into Meg’s driveway and pulled to a stop next to her Ford Taurus. A dog was a good idea. A boy needed a dog. “What kind of puppy?”

“I like black ones with white spots.”

Lights burned from within the house and a single bulb lit the porch. Together they climbed out of the truck and walked up the front steps. It was close to eleven-thirty and Travis’s feet were dragging. “How long do you have to be good?”

“For one month.”

The kid couldn’t stay out of trouble with his mother for one week. “Well, just watch your mouth and you might make it.” He shoved his keys into his pants pocket and opened the door for his nephew.

Meg sat on the couch in her white nightgown and pink fuzzy robe. Tears shone in her green eyes as she looked up from something she held in her hand. A forced smile curved her lips and dread settled on Mick’s shoulders. It was going to be one of those nights.

“Did you see the fireworks, Mom?” If Travis noticed, he didn’t seem bothered.

“No, honey, I didn’t go outside. But I heard them.” She stood and Travis wrapped his arms around her waist. “They were huge!”

“Did you behave yourself?” She placed her hand on her son’s head and looked over at Mick.

“Yes,” Travis answered, and Mick confirmed it with a nod.

“That’s my good boy.”

Travis looked up. “Pete said maybe I could spend the night and his mom said, ‘Some other time.’”

“We’ll see.” Like their mother, Meg was a beautiful woman, with smooth white skin and long black hair. And as with their mother, her moods were unpredictable as hell. “Go get your pajamas on and get in bed. I’ll be in to kiss you good night in a minute.”

“Okay,” Travis said through a yawn. “Good night, Uncle Mick.”

“Night, buddy.” An almost overwhelming urge to turn away pulled at Mick and he actually took a step back. Away from what he knew was to come and toward the cool night air.

Meg watched her son leave the room, then she held out her hand and opened her palm. “I found Mom’s wedding ring.”

“Meg.”

“She took it off and left it on her nightstand before she went to the bar that night. She never took it off.”

“I thought you weren’t going to go through her things anymore.”

“I wasn’t.” She closed her hand around the ring and bit her thumbnail. “It was packed away with Grandmother Loraine’s jewelry, and I found it when I was looking for her four leaf clover necklace. The one she used to wear all the time because it brought her luck. I wanted to wear it to work tomorrow.”

God, he hated when his sister got like this. He was five years younger than Meg, but he’d always felt like the older brother.

Her big green eyes looked across at him and her hand fell to her side. “Was Daddy really going to leave us?”

Hell, Mick didn’t know. No one knew but Loch, and he was long dead. Dead and gone and in the past. Why couldn’t Meg leave it alone?

Maybe because she’d just turned ten a few months before the night their mother had loaded a snub-nosed.38 and emptied five chambers into Mick’s father and a young waitress by the name of Alice Jones. Meg remembered a hell of a lot more about that night twenty-nine years ago when their mother had killed more than Loch and his latest lover. More about the night their mother had put the short barrel into her own mouth, pulled the trigger, and killed more than herself too. She’d blown apart the lives of her two children, and Meg had never really recovered.

“I don’t know, Meggie. Grandmother didn’t think so.” But that wasn’t saying anything. Loraine had always turned a blind eye and deaf ear to her own husband’s and son’s many affairs and offenses and later to everything Mick had done. She lived her whole life in denial. It had been easier for her to pretend everything was wonderful. Especially when it wasn’t.

“But Grandmother didn’t live with us then. She didn’t know what it was like. You didn’t either. You were too little. You don’t remember.”

“I remember enough.” He raised his hands and scrubbed his face. They’d had this conversation before and it never resolved anything. “What does it matter now?”

“Did he stop loving us, Mick?”

He dropped his hands to his sides and felt the back of his skull get tight. Please stop.

Tears streamed down her cheeks. “If he still loved us, why did she shoot him? He’d had affairs before. According to everyone in town, he’d had lots of affairs.”

He walked to his sister and put his hands on the shoulders of her fuzzy pink robe. “Let it go.”

“I’ve tried. I’ve tried to be like you, and sometimes I can, but…why wasn’t she buried with her wedding ring?”

The bigger question was, why had she loaded the.38? Had she really meant to kill anyone or just scare the piss out of Loch and his young lover? Who knew? Thinking about it didn’t serve any purpose but to drive a person crazy. “It doesn’t matter now. Our life isn’t in the past, Meg.”

She took a deep breath. “You’re right. I’ll put the ring away and forget about it.” She shook her head. “It’s just that sometimes I can’t turn it off.”

He pulled her to his chest and held her tight. “I know.”

“I get so afraid.”

He got afraid too. Afraid that she’d fall into the downward spiral that had claimed their mother and that she’d never climb out. Mick had always wondered if his mother had given a second of thought to him and Meg. If she’d thought about the devastation and loss she was about to leave behind on a barroom floor. As she’d loaded the gun that night, had it crossed her mind that she was about to leave her children orphans or that her actions would force them to live within the horrible fallout? As she’d driven to Hennessy’s, had she thought about them and not cared? “Have you been taking your medicine?”

“It makes me tired.”

“You have to take it.” He pulled back and looked down into her face. “Travis depends on you. And I depend on you too.”

She sighed. “You do not, and Travis would probably be better off without me.”

“Meg.” He looked deep into her eyes. “You of all people know that isn’t true.”

“I know.” She pushed her hair out of her face. “I just meant that raising a boy is so hard.”

He hoped like hell that’s what she meant. “That’s why you have me.” He smiled, even though he felt ten years older than he had before walking into the house. “I’m not going anywhere. Even though you do make the world’s shittiest meatloaf.”

She smiled, and just like that, her mood changed. Like someone reached into her head and flipped a switch. “I like my meatloaf.”

“I know.” He dropped his hands and reached into his pocket for his keys. “But you like old-lady food.” Meg cooked like their grandmother had. Like she was baking a casserole for a potluck at the senior center.

“You’re evil and a bad influence on Travis.” She laughed and folded her arms across her chest. “But you always make me feel better.”

“Good night,” he said and headed for the door. Cool night air brushed across his face and neck as he walked to his truck, and he took a deep breath and let it out. He’d always made Meg feel better. Always. And afterward, he always felt like shit. She’d have a breakdown, and when it was over, she’d be fine. Never seeming to notice the broken bits and pieces she’d left in the wake of her unpredictable moods.

Having been gone for twelve years, he’d almost forgotten what those moods were like. Sometimes he wished he’d just stayed gone.