Somebody to Love (21 page)

CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN

“E
VERYONE
HAS
LEFT
US
.
Everyone. You, Nicky, Lucy and that
Ethan. We’re bereft. Bereft, Parker.”

Parker grinned. Ethan’s mother
didn’t believe in Skype, and therefore couldn’t see Parker enjoying the
melodrama. “I’m sorry, Marie. I miss you and Gianni, too.”

“Our grandson! Six weeks without
him! I don’t know if Gianni’s heart can take it.”

“Well, Ethan will be back soon,
Marie.”

“Who takes three weeks for a
vacation? And then Ethan’s taking that precious boy to see
you.
”

“Well, he is my son.”

“We’re so alone. To think we
left Valle de Muerte to be abandoned by our family.”

Parker bit down on a laugh. She
got quite a kick out of the Mirabellis, who’d always been good to her, so
long as she could ignore the many, many, many nudges, hints and suggestions
on how to raise Nicky and why she should’ve married Ethan—at least that
battle hymn had stopped since he married Lucy—and how Parker should eat
much, much more.

“So what’s new up there? In
Maine?
”
Marie said the word suspiciously, as if not quite certain Maine was a true
part of the United States.

“Oh, not too much.” Parker opted
not to mention her stint in the clink. “Lots of work to do before Nicky gets
here.”

There was a gusty sigh. “You
could come home,” Marie suggested. Parker had told her and Gianni about her
father—hard to miss when CNN had done a special on him—and the change in her
finances, but Marie didn’t always pay attention to facts she deemed
unpleasant.

“As soon as I get this house
ready to be sold, I’ll be back. Nicky and I will be home at the end of
August at the latest.” She had to be; Nicky started kindergarten after Labor
Day. All-day kindergarten. The thought caused her heart to spasm.

“August. I could be dead by
August.”

“True, true. Well, I have work
to do, so I should get going, Marie,” Parker said, having fielded enough
guilt for the day. She loved the Mirabellis. She was also very grateful not
to be their daughter-in-law and could therefore hang up, whereas Lucy could
not. “I’ll call you soon.”

“You’re eating enough? You’re
too skinny.”

“Aw! Thanks! I’ve gained eleven
pounds this year.”

“Well, it’s not enough. We love
you, sweetheart. Gianni says hello. You know how he is—he won’t talk on the
phone. Bye-bye.”

Parker hung up and went outside.
It was two days after her inadvertent drug dealing, and before Marie’s call,
she’d been working at improving the house’s curb appeal, mainly by hacking
up the roots of the sumac trees and scrubby pines. She’d buy some hanging
baskets, since she knew the wholesalers now, and put out some pots of
geranium and sweet-potato vine. Who knew? Maybe it would trick someone into
buying the place.

James had been right about her
sentence of community service. Yesterday, when the judge had found out that
she was a children’s author, he ordered her to do a library program on the
Holy Rollers, the favorite books of His Honor’s six-year-old grandchild.
Frankly, Parker would rather have spent another day in jail with Crazy Dave
(who was out with no fines at all, go figure). Lavinia had been told to file
for a medical-marijuana-growers’ license, and would also be having dinner
with the judge on Saturday with a possible session of “slapping uglies”
afterward.

As for James, he was on the roof
right now, doing God knew what. Looking beautiful, apparently. Killer tan,
too, no matter that she’d bought him his own 100-factor sunscreen. His hair
was curling from sweat, and the skin on his back glistened. She did love a
sweaty man.

That’s icky,
said Golly.

“You’ll appreciate it when
you’re older,” Parker muttered. Yes, she was thirty-five years old and
hadn’t been laid in three years. Time to look away. Time to
focus.

Funds were running low. A
part-time job at the flower shop was not doing much other than covering
groceries. To her own eyes, the cottage didn’t look much better. In fact, it
looked worse. The sides were stripped and covered in Tyvek, the shingles
having yet to be delivered. The grass, which she’d hacked away at like some
Amazon explorer, was uneven, rife with weeds and dry, thanks to a notable
lack of rain this summer.

“Don’t worry so much,” James
called, reading her mind. “It’s getting there. It looks worse before it gets
better.”

“I know, I know,” she said, a
bit irked that she was so transparent. An electrician had put in a few more
outlets and given them a discount, as he was an old schoolmate of Dewey’s.
The bathroom shower no longer leaked onto the floor; the Three Musketeers
had come over to supervise her caulking. She couldn’t change the fact that
the tiles were pink, but she was working on how to make that look cute and
retro, rather than hideous and dated.

So this was what house flipping
was like. Backbreaking, ever more expensive, built on a frail hope, but kind
of fun anyway.

Especially with Thing One. He
was eternally patient with her dopey questions—she hadn’t been able to
figure out how to change a vacuum-cleaner bag the other day—and he never
made her feel useless, the way Harry did. And when he smiled at her, she
felt a rush of something so sharp and sweet, it actually hurt her chest. Add
to this the fact that he walked around half-dressed all the time, and heck
yeah!

James knelt down to check
something on the roof, then stood and crossed his beautiful arms over his
beautiful chest. “Put up or shut up,” he said with a wink.

“Jeesh, Thing One! Such an ego.”
She paused. “But you are fun to look at.”

“You look nice, too,” he said.
“I’m on fire. Stunned with lust.” Her beige carpenter pants were grubby, the
T-shirt from Gianni’s Ristorante Italiano was torn, and her hair was stuffed
under a Yankees baseball cap—one didn’t forget where one was born, after
all, and Parker had been born at Columbia Presbyterian, New York, New York,
thank you too much. She was sweating like a racehorse and could only imagine
the shade of red her face had taken on: beet or boiled lobster. Either way,
she was not flushed a delicate pink; she knew that. The bathroom had a
mirror, after all.

Well. She’d cool off with a swim
in another hour or so, and hopefully James would be the one ogling then.
Seemed only fair. She knew he didn’t like her swimming—he watched her like
Nana watched the kids in
Peter Pan
when she was out there—but she also knew he
couldn’t take his eyes off her, eleven pounds be damned.

So. Mutual lusting. Always
fun.

“Parker? Oh, dear God, tell me
that isn’t you, sweating like an Ecuadoran stonemason.”

Parker’s eyes widened in shock
at the sound of the voice. She turned. Oh, Lord. It was true. “Mom? What are
you doing here?”

Althea Harrington Welles Foster
Brandheiser Levinstein was staring with openmouthed horror at Parker, the
house, the yard. She wore Jackie O–style sunglasses, a long silky scarf and
a white linen suit. The car was a red BMW with rental plates.

“This?” Althea said.
“
This
is
what Julia left you? Oh, the old shrew! I’d kill her if she wasn’t already
dead! She always made it sound like… Oh, Parker, you poor, poor thing. And
that father of yours. I’ll kill him, too. I hope he’s someone’s girlfriend
in prison. I hope he’s on a chain gang. I hope—”

“Mom! Wow. I can’t believe
you’re here.” Parker wiped her forehead with her sleeve and walked toward
Althea.

“Neither can I. I’m rather
hoping this is a bad dream or a hallucination. Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me
you inherited the Pines. Please.”

“This is it. It’s all I have in
the world, Mother dear.”

“Oh, my God. You may as well
throw yourself off that dock and hope to drown quickly. The smell in this
town! How can you bear it?”

Actually, Parker had gotten used
to the smell of baitfish. She gave her mother a robust hug, which Althea
accepted, daintily patting Parker’s shoulder. “It is what it is, Mom. But
what are you doing here? Why didn’t you call me?”

Her mother removed her
sunglasses and gave Parker a level look. “When one hears that one’s daughter
has been in prison, one hops on the next plane. Apparently, you’re following
your father into a life of crime.”

Parker sighed. “Yes, Mother.
That’s it exactly. I’m a drug dealer. It wasn’t prison, by the way. It was
just a holding cell. And the charges were dropped.”

“Just a holding cell. Dear Lord,
what have we come to? Have you gained weight? You look beefy.”

Only Althea would call a size
ten beefy. She herself had the scrawny size-four physique of the desperately
middle-aged—those women who were liposuctioned and implanted and had tans
applied and paid a personal trainer to deny Nature its due. “And calling me?
Why was that a bad idea?”

Althea stared. She might’ve been
scowling, but Botox had frozen her eyebrows into that shiny, plasticine
look, as well as given her a permanent half smile, so Parker could never
tell.

“I wasn’t sure you could get
phone calls, dear. I thought time might’ve been of the essence.”

“How did you know I was in
trouble?” Parker asked.

“Lavinia tracked me down on
Facebook, then called. My goodness, the woman sounds like Yul Brynner on his
deathbed.”

“Since when do you and Lavinia
talk to each other? She told me she hadn’t seen you since you were
kids.”

“Well, I
appreciated
the call,
Parker. I’m here because I thought you might need bail money.”

“Thanks, Mom.” Althea would
never win Mother of the Year, but her heart was in the right
place.

“What is
that?
” her mother asked,
squinting as best she was able. Beauty stood on the steps, not quite ready
to defend the place, not quite ready to back down from a stranger, either.
Progress, in other words. “Is that a
dog?
”

“Shoot, I thought it was a pony.
No, you’re right, it’s a dog. Dang.”

“Sarcasm is the lowest form of
humor, Parker. Did Harvard teach you nothing? And who on earth is
that?
”

James was coming down the
ladder. He walked over, all sweaty male glory, and extended his hand. “Hi.
James Cahill. We’ve met a few times.”

Althea deigned to look at him.
“Have we?” she asked.

“Yes. At your grandson’s
christening and again on his third birthday.”

“He works for Harry, Mom. He’s
helping me out.”

“Is he? How fascinating. Put a
shirt on, young man. If I wanted to see a naked man, I would’ve stopped at
Chippendales.”

James smiled that wonderful,
achingly wide smile, causing Parker’s Lady Land to squeeze hot and hard. He
gave Parker an amused glance and went off. He did not, she was pleased to
see, put his shirt back on.

Althea huffed. “Well, this ruins
my plans. I thought we might spend some time together, do a little
redecorating, but I see it’s hopeless. I absolutely cannot stay
here.”

“Actually, you could have my
room, and I’ll—”

“No. I’ll find somewhere. Surely
there’s a B and B around this godforsaken area.”

“It burned over the
winter.”

“Small wonder. Well. Give me
some time. I’ll see what I can find. Dinner tonight, darling? I’ll pick you
up around six.” She put her sunglasses back on and climbed back behind the
wheel, then gunned the motor, leaving Parker in a cloud of dust.

“What a happy surprise,” James
offered.

“So happy,” Parker
said.

“By the way,” he added, “I think
you look great, beefy or not.”

“I’m not beefy,” she
snapped.

“You’re beautiful,” he
said.

There was that knowing grin, the
I’ve seen you naked
look. “Just…just pipe down, you,” she
said.

“Gorgeous.”

“Stop it, Thing One.”

“Stunning.”

“Okay, you’ve pushed your
credibility enough for one day. I’m going swimming. Want to
come?”

That shut him up. “No thanks. Be
careful.”

And as always, she felt his eyes
on her as she and her little dog swam through the cold water.

* * *

A
T
SIX
O
’
CLOCK
that evening, Parker heard the purr of an expensive car coming down the
road.

“Here comes trouble,” she said,
opening the front door. James came up behind her, smelling of soap and
laundry detergent and sun. So good it should be illegal. She could feel his
warmth behind her, and if she stepped back a little bit, she’d be nicely
cozied up against his—