Chances Are (10 page)

Not that he was perfect. He had a temper. He could be as stubborn as her five-year-old daughter. He occasionally left the toilet seat up and had the alarming tendency to fall asleep in the middle of one of their late-night E-mail sessions, but he was a good man in every sense of that much-maligned phrase. She knew it wasn’t fashionable to love a good man when bad boys were so much more fun, but she couldn’t help it. She had learned from her father what a man should be. He had taught her that the strongest man was invariably the gentlest, that if a man couldn’t show compassion to a child or an animal, he wasn’t right for her.

The day she met Aidan for the first time, Priscilla had relieved herself on his shoe. She had stared in horror at the widening wet spot, expecting him to lash out and present her with a bill for a new pair of shoes. Turned out you could learn a lot about a man when he was standing there with a wet foot. He acted like poodles peed on him every day of the week, like it was no big deal. Silly as it sounded, that was the moment she started to fall in love with him.

The day’s many annoyances fell away from her as she watched him navigate his way to the truck. Her embarrassment at Saks. The surge of anger toward her mother. The sense that everyone else’s opinion, even Crystal the Tattooed Lady’s, about how and when she married Aidan mattered more than hers. None of it mattered, not compared to the way she felt about him, about the future they wanted to build together, the blended family they would call their own.

“Hey,” she said when he was just a few feet away.

He looked up, and she saw in his eyes everything she had always hoped to see reflected back at her. Joy. Wonder. Love in all its forms.

“Hey yourself,” he said, tucking the crutch more firmly under his left arm. “How long’ve you been here?”

“Not very,” she said, instantly understanding the subtext. He didn’t want her to see him in what he perceived as a vulnerable situation. “We must have had our watches synchronized.”

She slid off the hood of his Jeep, and he leaned against the driver’s side fender and pulled her into his arms.

“How was the luncheon?” he asked after they had kissed.

“An afterthought,” she said. “It was all a fake. Rose kidnapped me and dragged me to the Saks in Short Hills.”

“For what?” Aidan looked as puzzled as she had been. “A forced march through the housewares department?”

“Bridal gowns,” she said, pausing for effect. “Hideous, fussy, overpriced bridal gowns I wouldn’t wear on Halloween.”

They kissed again, longer this time and deeper. Heat began to gather low in her belly and between her legs as she felt him growing hard against her.

“It gets worse,” she said, wondering if maybe Gina had had the right idea after all. The backseat looked awfully inviting. “Toni and Connie were there, too.” She paused. “And Claire.”

“So she went after all?”

“Yes, and if looks could kill, I would’ve collapsed over my appetizer at Bernino’s this afternoon. I swear she used to like me, Aidan. I don’t know what’s happened.”

“Of course she likes you. It’s your aunts she can’t stand.”

She told him about the dresses, the cracks about her weight, about standing there in her Kmart underwear in front of his sister-in-law, his daughter, and her relatives.

“Doesn’t sound bad to me,” he said, aiming one of those lazy, sexy smiles in her direction. “Wish I’d been there to see you in your bra and panties.”

She tried to ignore the tingle of excitement his words awakened. “It was a nightmare. The salesclerk acted like she’d never seen a size ten in captivity before.”

He said something wonderfully rude, designed to make her laugh.

“Don’t go trying to cheer me up,” she said, feeling cheered up despite herself. “I told Rose you wanted us to elope.”

“Will I need a food taster next time I come over for dinner?”

“Might not be a bad idea.”

“What did she say?”

“That she thought you were smarter than that.”

“That’s the best she could do?”

“She likes you,” Maddy said, wishing she hadn’t brought the whole thing up when kissing was so much more enjoyable. “She lets you get away with murder. If I had told her it was my idea, she probably would have had me arrested.”

“I don’t think eloping is against the law.”

“Then you don’t know my mother,” she said and pulled his head down for another kiss. She could feel his heat through their clothes, and it took every ounce of self-control at her command to keep from pulling him into the Jeep and having her way with him. “Maybe we could—”

“A couple more weeks,” he said, tracing the contours of her face with a gentle finger. “I don’t want you to be disappointed.”

“As if I could be,” she whispered against his mouth. “As if anything about you could disappoint me.”

“The broken leg disappointed you.”

“No,” she corrected him, “it was the timing.”

His groan of frustration said it all for both of them.

Ten weeks ago, the gods had miraculously arranged for them to have a free Friday night. The odds of that happening again any time soon were up there in the lunar and solar eclipse on the same day category.

They had been seeing each other for a little over a month at that point, and the attraction between them had reached the boiling point. There wasn’t anyone in town who didn’t know exactly what was going on. Passionate kisses at the door, stolen moments in the back room of the bar, whispered phone calls and incendiary E-mails in the heart of the night—all they needed was time and privacy to take the next step toward the future.

Maddy was discovering that taking a lover in her thirties was a very different experience. She was the mother of a small child now, a little girl who looked toward her for guidance in everything from brushing her teeth to understanding the difference between right and wrong.

The decisions she made no longer belonged to her alone; they created aftershocks, big and small, that had the potential to shake Hannah’s world to its foundations. She had seen the chaos her aunts’ endless stream of husbands and lovers had brought to her cousins’ lives, and she would live the rest of her life alone before she did that to Hannah.

What she and Aidan had found together felt right. Beneath the wildly exciting electricity that sizzled between them, there was something deeper, something more profound than either had imagined possible. But she didn’t want to make a mistake. Not every mistake turned out as wonderfully as Hannah.

They had talked about their future that night over dinner at a tiny inn near Spring Lake. They talked about their daughters, their parents, the partners they had loved and lost. They talked through the starter, the entrée, and through dessert, and they were still talking when they said good night to the small wait staff and started down the sidewalk toward the car. Countless stars spangled the winter night sky. Moonlight made the snowbanks sparkle. Disney couldn’t have conjured up a scene more conducive to romance.

And they were ready. There had never been a couple more ready than they were. The looks they gave each other could have melted the polar ice caps. If they had fallen to the ground right then, right there in a snowbank, neither one would have felt the cold. Both had noticed a small hotel a few blocks away, the one with the Occupancy sign blinking in the window. The night was a gift, a blessing from the gods of love who occasionally took pity on couples in need of a break.

Unfortunately, the gods took their job literally, and a layer of black ice near the driver’s-side door turned Maddy and Aidan’s plans upside down. Aidan’s right leg, the one he had fractured badly a few years earlier, sustained another compound fracture of the ankle which, in turn, required more surgery, more rehabilitation, and more frustration. Suddenly romance took a backseat to the grueling demands of physical therapy and pain on a newly blossoming love.

Now here they were, almost three months later, still waiting for the right time and the right place to come along so they could finally become lovers in every sense of the word. Whatever difficulties he perceived his broken leg would bring to their lovemaking could easily be overcome with a little imagination and a sense of humor.

However, Aidan was a proud man. He had been battling injuries for over three years now, and it was clear the experience had made him wary of appearing vulnerable in any way.

She understood all too well, because her own vulnerabilities were never far from the surface. The extra pounds that had settled around her waist and thighs. The stretch marks that silvered her belly. The fact that she was old enough to know that love didn’t always last forever, that sometimes good people with the best intentions couldn’t find a way to make it work, no matter how hard they tried, and it was always the children who paid the price.

That wasn’t going to happen to Hannah or Kelly, not if she could help it. When she and Aidan married, they would marry for keeps.

“So how did you like the wedding gowns?” he asked as he edged the Jeep into traffic on Main Street.

“I didn’t,” she said. “I can’t see buying a dress that costs more than a used car.”

“I thought all women dreamed about wearing a long white gown and a veil.” He waved thanks to Bob Heffernan from the auto body shop for letting him in. “The Princess Di thing.”

“And you saw how that ended up,” Maddy said. “I never dreamed about getting married. I was too busy planning how my Barbie and I were going to rule the world.”

“Kelly was like that, too. She wrote inaugural addresses for Malibu Barbie.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if she was writing an inaugural address for herself one day. You did a great job with her, Aidan.”

“Not me,” he said, deflecting the credit the way he always did. “All I ever had to do was point out the right road and watch her do the rest.”

“I know that’s not true. You’re a wonderful father.”

“She made it easy for me. If it hadn’t been for Claire’s help, I wouldn’t have known my ass from my elbow.”

There was no denying that Claire had been a rock for Aidan to lean on during the first few years of Kelly’s life, but she knew who had done the real parenting.

“Hannah’s lucky to have you in her life,” she said. “And so am I.”

He wasn’t good with compliments. He didn’t say anything, just stared straight ahead at the cars moving slowly up the main drag, but he was smiling, and she found herself smiling, too. He had already done the heavy lifting where Kelly was concerned and done it splendidly.

In a few weeks she would graduate high school as valedictorian of her class and then before they had a chance to take a deep breath, she would be off to school in Manhattan on a full scholarship, well on her way to the life of happiness and accomplishment she deserved.

In the midst of the chaos that came with planning a wedding, how wonderful to know there was one part of their lives that was perfect and likely to stay that way.

THERE WAS ONE thing adults didn’t tell you when they gave you the great facts-of-life speech. They told you about eggs and sperm, about fertilization and the division of cells. They told you about wombs and embryos, about missed periods and the nine months that followed, but the one thing you really needed to know you had to find out on your own.

The first time she and Seth had made love, Kelly knew instantly what no adult had ever been able to tell her. Sex changed everything. You couldn’t pretend it never happened. You couldn’t go back to the way you were before, not even if you wanted to. That decision changed you forever. The last whisper of childhood faded, and you were left all alone in the strange world adults called home.

She could barely look at her father for weeks afterward. Every time she did, she was torn between the fact that he was a sexual being—something too gross to contemplate—and the knowledge that she could never again be his innocent little girl. Those days were gone. The balance between them had been irrevocably altered, and he hadn’t a clue. He talked to her the same way he had always talked to her, small talk about dinner, about Aunt Claire, about somebody at the bar, and he didn’t even notice the difference. She kept her secret well, and he trusted her so implicitly that he didn’t suspect a thing. Somehow that made her terribly sad, although she couldn’t explain why, not even to her journal.

Her friends knew immediately. She walked into home room the morning after her first time, and Frannie flashed thumbs-up from across the room. By study hall, Rachel and Kimberly were begging for details Kelly suddenly realized she didn’t want to share. Her friends were all on their second or third partners, happily experimenting, no strings attached.

Just like Kelly might have been if love hadn’t entered the picture. Her friends were the ones who had played bride all the time, while Kelly holed up in her room with a chemistry set. Frannie and Kim had had their weddings planned from gown to party favors by the time they hit puberty. All they needed was a guy in a tux to come along, and their dreams would come true.

She wanted so much more than that. She wanted to go to school, get her degree, maybe go on to do graduate work, then travel before she was too old and settled to see the world. And the best part of all was that Seth wanted the same things she wanted.

Her friends took chances and never got caught. Funny how something that used to worry her now made her feel a little better. She and Seth were always careful. They used condoms. They even kept an eye on the time of month, something nobody did anymore, not even the most devout Catholics. That was why she was so sure this couldn’t be happening. There had to be some other reason for the way she had been feeling. Another reason why she had puked her brains out in the bathroom in front of—God help her—Hannah. Maybe she was getting some kind of nasty springtime flu. Or maybe it was food poisoning. Or maybe the stress of juggling schoolwork and her after-class clubs and her different jobs was taking a toll. It could be anything. It didn’t have to be that she was pregnant.