Blame it on Cupid (10 page)

She stood up, still smiling. “Jack, I'll bet you're an outstanding dad. And there's no doubt in my mind you'd be an outstanding friend as well.”

She bent down and brushed those soft-swollen lips on his brow. “Thanks. For being such a wonderful listener. I hope I can do the same for you sometime.”

He sat there after she'd gone in the house, wondering if anyone would see him if he bashed his head against the nearest rock.

Here he was thinking about stripping her naked, and she was thinking of him as a good dad and good friend.

Not that he wanted her to think about him in any other way. For Pete's sake, she was the same as a grenade without the pin. Everything going on next door added up to a headache of migraine proportions. She seemed…too flighty, too young…to suddenly take on parenthood, at least parenthood of a girl as complex as Charlene. It'd be like a poodle trying to mother a baby Rottweiler. Or a fuzzy, fluffy rabbit trying to nurture a porcupine.

Jack could sympathize. She was in a mess.

It just wasn't his mess.

Yet as he trudged across the yard, he still felt unsettled and…restless. He was used to women coming on to him, thinking he was attractive. It's not as if he were in his dotage, for God's sake. He had all his hair. Kept up his build. Women seemed to sense he had exceptional potential between the sheets—which was the total truth. He took major pride in the skills and experience he brought to a lover.

So it'd been a while since a woman had punched him in the ego teeth.

What itched him most was that Merry apparently thought she was complimenting him. Good friend? Nice dad? What the hell was that? When she'd kissed him the night before, she'd sure yanked all his testosterone chains…but hell, maybe he hadn't aroused any of hers and the chemical combustion between them had been all on his side.

So…
fine,
he thought. And slammed the door on the way in.

 

M
ERRY LOOKED AT THE GLUM FACE
across the breakfast table on Saturday morning. “You sleep okay?”

“Fine,” Charlie said, head down.

“You kept saying it went okay in school…but did something happen with that Dougall boy?”

Charlene shrugged. “He said he was sorry. I'm not sure if he was really sorry or not. I think they made him say something because of, like, implying I was gay. The school always has a cow if somebody does the homophobe thing. But, whatever.”

Whatever.
The universal answer. But the kid's face still looked clunky-low. “Are you still upset with me about the argument we had about the guns?”

“No.”

Merry figured any answer that short was really a
yes,
but getting more information was like pushing a rock uphill. “I got a call last night,” she mentioned. “June Innes. Do you remember meeting her?”

Finally, a direct glance. Wary. “Yeah. She was the one who met with me after Dad died. I mean, so did a social worker, but Mrs. Innes was different. It was kind of weird, you know? She said she had the power to say what happened to me. Like that she'd be the one who'd represent me in court.”

Merry nodded. “I'm not sure I totally understand the whole guardian
ad litem
role, either, Charl. But you've got it right. She's supposed to be on your side, represent your needs. And she called to say she was coming over Monday, after school. Just to see you.” She would have added more details, but Charlie's face lit up with alarm.

“I'm
fine.
Nobody has to ‘represent' me. Nobody has to see me. Nothing's wrong. I don't want to talk to her. You're not going to throw me out just because of the trouble in school, are you? I've never been in trouble before. Even once. It was just a bad day!”

Merry felt her heart squeeze tight. “I was never going to throw you out, you silly, whether you're having bad days or good days. But we can't stop Mrs. Innes from visiting, Charl. And she really is on your side. I have to admit, though, when she called, I realized we'd been trashing the house. We should probably do straightening up before she gets here.”

“I can clean house. I know how. You don't have to.” And then another burst. “I don't want to go anywhere else but home. I don't see why she gets to say what happens to me. She doesn't even
know
me. You're not mad at me, are you, Merry? Because I can be quieter. And I can clean good. You're not going to let her take me away, are you?”

“No one, but no one, is going to take you away, Charlie.” Merry kept thinking,
Poor baby.
The crazy brush cut and swagger and guns were just the opposite of the real picture. Under all that was such a vulnerable little girl. “But I am guessing that Mrs. Innes will suggest that you see a counselor.”

“I don't need any stupid counselor!
Why?
”

“Because it's so hard to lose someone. Hard to deal with the grieving. People can help you—”

“Like somebody can bring my dad back?” Charlie rolled her eyes. “I'm not talking to some
stranger
about my dad. The whole thing's stupid. It's something grown-ups want to do to make themselves feel better.”

Merry said slowly, “You're right.”

“I'm
trying
not to cause trouble. To do anything wrong. I know, I messed up in school this week—”

Okay. The kid was breaking her heart. She was just so inhibited, so repressed. So tight. So trying to survive something hugely over her head. “Look, Charlie. We have to see Mrs. Innes. We don't have any choice. It's a court mandate. But that's not happening until Monday. A long time away. Let's work on today.”

“Yeah, you said. We gotta clean the house. And I said I would.”

“No.”

“No?”

“No,” Merry said firmly, and swept the breakfast dishes to the counter. “I may not know how to do engine parts and guns, kiddo. But I do know how to have fun. Come on.”

“Come on where?”

“Out.”

The poor deprived child had never Rollerbladed before. Never gone into a department store and tried on fancy hats. Never driven down the road singing at the top of her lungs.

“You're not normal,” Charlie said.

“Oh, thank you.”

That won a smile.

By then, Merry gave herself credit for winning quite a few smiles—just no outright natural laughter. Charlie went along with her, didn't argue, didn't complain about anything. But she just couldn't seem to really let loose and relax.

Merry worked harder. The day was only half done. After picking up fast food for lunch, she drove around a while longer, trying to think up fresh ideas at the same time she got a better feeling for the town. It was an old-fashioned New England–looking town, with white spired churches and brick houses and lots of streets named after trees—Oak and Maple, Sassafras and Chestnut. But it was awfully hard to get her bearings when the roads were all so curly, swirling around hills, dipping down into valleys.

Eventually, Charlie said in awe, “You really couldn't find your way out of a parking lot, could you?”

“Hey,” Merry said in an injured tone, but on the inside, she was delighted. It was a real live insult. Surely that meant they were making progress? And just then, as she turned down a street she'd never seen before, she caught the sign for a craft shop.

“I don't do crafts,” Charlene insisted.

“We're not going to do
crafts.
We're going to do painting.”

“But I don't paint, either.”

Neither did Merry, but the idea had sparked a project. Anything would be better than the ghoulish contemporary art in the house, right? So she coaxed Charlene into the store and emerged two hundred bucks poorer—two hundred bucks she couldn't afford, because she doubted anyone'd believe this was a guardian expense—but they had canvases and brushes and a zillion cans of colorful paint.

“I don't get what we're going to do with all this stuff.”

“Paint some pictures for the walls.”

“But I can't paint. Really.”

“Sure you can. I
know
we can paint better than the Green Skeleton Girl.”

Charlie knew the painting she meant. “But that's art, Merry. That's why my dad bought all those pictures. He said they'd be worth a bunch of money some day.”

“Maybe they will be. And they'd be great. You can consider that ‘found money' if those ships ever really come in.”

“Ships?”

“Never mind. The point is that there's no reason we can't store those paintings in a nice, safe closet, is there? I mean, if you happened to paint something you liked better and actually wanted to look at every day?”

By midafternoon, the sky suddenly turned darker than a nightmare. When they pulled in the driveway, a howling wind chased them inside. Merry doubted a Virginia winter storm could rival a serious Minnesota blizzard, but either way, it was a good time to hole up inside.

Charlie watched warily while Merry set up. Once she draped newspaper all over the kitchen floor, she pushed kitchen chairs together to work as make-shift easels. The chairs weren't remotely the right height for the big white canvasses, but she couldn't think of another one. Charlie came through with a couple of old T-shirts to wear over their clothes, while Merry organized the brushes and bowls of paint. Last, she flipped on all the lights against the gloomy afternoon and turned up some music—some nice, loud, hip-gyrating rock and roll. “Okay, let it rip!”

“Let what rip?”

Merry showed her, taking a brush dripping with sun-yellow and swathing it across a canvas. “Now, your turn.”

“What color am I supposed to use?”

“Any color you love. That's what we're going to build. Canvases that are big splashes of colors we love.”

“That's all we're trying to do?”

“That's all,” Merry affirmed.

Charlie gingerly brushed on a streak of khaki green.

Merry ran over and put a moosh of cherry red on an edge. At Charlie's shocked look, she said, “Go on. Go put something on mine.”

“You mean wreck yours?”

“You won't be
wrecking
anything. We'll just be creating something different than anyone else would create.”

“In the entire universe,” Charlie agreed dryly. But she went over and dabbed a few spots of orange on Merry's canvas.

Merry responded by dipping her entire hand in the sky blue and putting palm prints all over Charlie's picture. Charlie took off her socks and did feet prints—in dark purple—on hers.

For the first time, the very first time since Merry got here, she could taste just a wee bit of elation. They were having fun together. They were
being
together. And if they could just start
being
together, Merry figured the rest had a prayer of working out. Charlie wasn't going to recover from her dad's loss overnight. Merry wasn't going to turn into a parent overnight.

But hell's bells, at last she had a taste of hope.

The two of them slashed and streaked and stroked until a half dozen canvases were completely dripping in various crazy colors and shapes. At some point Merry realized the two of them were head-to-bare-feet covered in paint as well—but who cared? Finally, though, enough seemed enough. Merry stepped back to give their fancy art a critical eye. “Hot damn. Are we good or are we good?”

Charlie made the strangest sound. “Hogwash.”

“Huh? Hogwash? What's hogwash?”

“It's—” Abruptly she made that sound again, as if there was a little choke gurgling at the very back of her throat. Her so-careful expression suddenly seemed to crack.

Merry stared, disbelieving. It wasn't just a smile taking over that face. Charlie actually bent over, clearly in response to how god-awful she thought their artwork was—and let out a laugh. A rusty laugh. A little-girl-not-trying-to-be-brave-right-then laugh. In fact, it was a downright boisterous giggle.

Only then…the lights went out. The lights, the music, the fridge, the furnace, the everything. Whatever cut off the power, the kitchen was abruptly dark as a cellar.

And that one precious moment of silly joyfulness disappeared faster than smoke.

 

G
IVEN THE ICE STORM
, Jack was just as glad Heather had opted out of a regular Saturday-night date. The original plan had been a movie, then out for drinks, then back to his place. This way, he thought as he finished shaving his chin, they could skip the movie. Just go straight for the main course.

Not that he presumed they'd be having sex. But they had every other time they'd been together. Heather loved her career, flew all over the world with her job, had no interest in settling down. But when she was in town, she got lonely.