Chances Are (35 page)

Her head ached with wondering what she should do next. She knew what her mother would say: “Tell Aidan. Don’t keep secrets from the man you’re going to marry.” And there was a lot to recommend Rose’s perspective. Aidan was Kelly’s father. Kelly was still a minor. Legally, if not ethically, Maddy wasn’t even part of the equation. She should turn to him right now and lay out the information as she knew it, detail her fears and suspicions, and let him decide what to do next.

That was what her mother would do. It was what Claire would do. It was what any sane woman who was about to be married in a little more than four months would do. But was it the right thing for Kelly?

Oh God, she wished she knew the answer.

 
THEY REACHED SPRING Lake a little after five o’clock. The town was every bit as charming as she had remembered, and Maddy winced as they drove past the spot where Aidan had taken his tumble that fateful winter night.

The inn Aidan had chosen was named the Sea Breeze, a requisite Victorian-era structure as wide and deep as the sandy beach that beckoned on the other side of the boardwalk. Where Paradise Point had a smaller, more intimate feel, Spring Lake was more expansive. B and Bs in her hometown were renovated Victorian-era houses, not renovated hotels the way they were here. You could fit the entire first floor of The Candlelight into the center hall of the Sea Breeze.

“Your room is ready,” the owner of the inn said as she handed over two keys and rang for someone to carry their bags. “Dinner will be served at eight P.M., just as you requested.”

Neither Maddy nor Aidan said a word as they followed a young man up the twisting staircase to their third-floor suite. He fiddled with his master key for a second, then pushed open the door and motioned them inside. He deposited their bags near the foot of the bed, showed them how to operate the Jacuzzi and the fireplace, then quickly disappeared.

“So now I know how Dorothy felt when she woke up in Oz,” Maddy breathed.

Where The Candlelight was all soft, romantic elegance, this room was full-on sensuality. The bed seemed to float in the center of the room, angled slightly so you could watch the waves crashing against the shore while you lay cradled in each other’s arms. The Jacuzzi was nestled in a curve of wall between the sitting room and the bedroom, with a perfect view of either the fireplace or the moon over the ocean, depending upon your preference. Candles, chunky ones and long skinny ones and tiny votives in burgundy crystal holders, were situated on every available surface. They lined the edge of the tub, surrounded the bed, and shimmered from mirrored shelves built into the wall.

Even the air seemed to have been fine-tuned to mount the ultimate assault on their unwary senses. The clean springtime smell of freesia mingled with the unmistakable bite of the sea and blended with the faintest overtone of spice.

The effect was intoxicating and extremely seductive, exactly as it was intended to be.

In Maddy’s fantasies, they had been naked and in each other’s arms before the door closed behind the bell man. In reality they were painfully awkward with each other, making polite conversation about the room temperature, the view, and whether or not tips were inclusive. She made a prolonged show of unpacking, something that should have taken forty-five seconds on any other day. And Aidan spent an unconscionable amount of time fiddling with the thermostat and checking the drain on the Jacuzzi.

For two people who would be married in a little more than four months, they were as uncomfortable as strangers. Back home in Paradise Point where they had no time to be alone and even less privacy, they couldn’t keep their hands off each other. Heat snaked through her body as she thought about the things they had done and the things they had talked about doing when the moment was finally right.

This was supposed to be that moment, and yet there they were on opposite sides of a room created for lovers who knew how to make the most of it.

She wanted to say something, anything, but the words wouldn’t come. Her throat was locked tight against them. He stood near the door that opened onto the balcony, arms crossed over his chest, looking out toward the ocean. His cane rested against the lamp table in the corner. She thought she had never seen a more beautiful man—or a lonelier one—in her life. He was so strong in so many ways, so confident in situations that would make another man crumble, and yet, there in that room with her, he suddenly looked vulnerable.

Love did that to you. It stripped you bare in ways that had nothing to do with the flesh. It left you exposed to wind and rain and storms that would send a sane person running for cover. You had to be crazy or crazy in love to stand there naked in a hurricane and ask for more.

He must have sensed her watching him because he turned away from the window. Their gazes caught and held, suspended in that midway point between them.

“It’s a beautiful day,” she said, finding her voice at last. “Why don’t we take a walk on the beach before dinner.”

“Come here,” he said, and her heart almost stopped beating.

“Why don’t I go change into that beautiful lingerie I bought,” she suggested. She couldn’t possibly feel more exposed in her lacy undergarments than she felt right now, fully dressed. “It’s way too expensive to just sit in my suitcase.”

“Come here,” he said again, more softly this time.

She sighed as she moved into his embrace. His chest was broad and hard-muscled, warm against her cheek. His arms were bands of steel holding her close. Everything about him was big and powerful, the textbook definition of all things masculine. But his hands—oh God, his hands. Big gentle hands that knew how to touch a woman the way she needed to be touched. All she had to do was touch him, breathe in the smell of his skin, and the jumbled pieces of her world fell into place.

Everything she thought she knew about making love, about what defined physical pleasure—none of it came close to what she felt when he began to unbutton her sweater. A simple action, the stuff of backseats and high school Saturday nights, and yet she began to tremble when he slid the first pearl button out. Heat pooled low in her belly as he released the second button with sure fingers. Three buttons, four, five.
Don’t stop . . . please don’t stop.

He didn’t. She should have known better. He seemed to read her body as if she had drawn him an erotic map, some wonderful dark magic guiding his hands and mouth to all the right places at precisely the right moment. His hands skimmed the curve of her breasts, her rib cage, her belly. She sucked in her breath as he slid one hand under the waistband of her jeans as all the ways in which she was less than perfect threatened to extinguish that lovely flame. She wasn’t a girl any longer, she wasn’t twenty-one and perfect. She was a woman. She had given birth. This body of hers with all of its perfect and imperfect parts was made to give and to receive pleasure, and oh God, it did that so well. . . .

Her fingers fought with his shirt buttons, struggling to push them through the buttonholes and failing, and finally she gave a tug that sent them bouncing across the floor. The sound he made—surprised delight—moved through her like music. His chest was bare, gloriously bare, and she placed her mouth against the midpoint and drank in his heat and his smell, gloried in the soft mat of curls, his warm flesh, the rapid thunder of his heartbeat beneath her lips.

He cupped her bottom with his hands, fingers sliding between her thighs, touching her in a way that made her bones melt.

“The bed,” she whispered, and seconds later they sank together into the mountain of satin and down.

Magic . . . more than magic . . . the way he touched her . . . the heat of his mouth as he ran his tongue over her breasts, her nipples, down over her soft belly, lower and then lower still, and she cried out his name as he tasted her, deeply, intimately, and made her believe she was beautiful and this could go on forever and ever . . . the two of them . . . this wonderful bed . . . all the time in the world to learn all there was to know . . . every secret inch. . . .

 
“NOW DON’T MAKE a big deal out of this,” Claire said to her family as she dug through the back closet for shoes an adult woman might actually wear on a night out. “We’re going out for dinner, not eloping to Vegas.”

Her father, daughter, and son exchanged glances.

“I saw that,” she said as she plucked a Payless special from under a stack of forgotten winter boots and broken umbrellas. “This is David Fenelli we’re talking about, guys. Not Armand Assante.”

“Armand Assante?” Kathleen made a face. “Who’s that?”

“Beats hell out of me,” Mike said. He looked down at his grandson. “You got any ideas?”

“He’s not a Met,” Billy said, which pretty much consigned Armand to the recycle bin.

“We’ll be fine,” Kathleen said as Claire sat on the bottom step and tried to slide her feet into the very high heels. “I’m going to make tofu in szechuan sauce. I found some bok choy at the market and some snow peas. I was thinking of asking Kelly if she wanted to join us.”

“She’s working at The Candlelight tonight,” Claire said automatically.

“I want meat,” Mike said. “It’s suppertime. You have meat at supper.”

“I thought we were getting a pizza,” Billy chimed in. “Kelly could pick it up at Ray’s and bring it over.”

The household chatter buzzed around her head like summer bees. Pizza talk. Her father complaining about Fritzie the cat. The general pandemonium that seemed to be part and parcel of the Meehan-O’Malley clan’s daily life. It was all white noise to Claire.

“These can’t be my shoes.” She looked down at her feet. “I can’t even slide my toes into them.”

“Sure you can.” Kathleen crouched down in front of her. “It won’t be pretty, but you can do it.” She took Claire’s foot in her left hand and the impossible shoe in her right and tried to bring them together.

“Then these aren’t my feet.”

“You’re getting older, Mom,” Kathleen said with all the annoying wisdom of the young. “Your feet are spreading.”

“I still wear the same size shoe I wore when I was your age.”

“I . . . don’t . . . think . . . so,” Kathleen grunted as she tried to jam Claire’s toes far enough forward to accommodate the rest of her foot, but it was like parking an eighteen-wheeler in a garage built for a minivan.

“Kath, that’s enough. It’s not going to happen. My heels days are over.”

“No, don’t give up. These shoes are so amazing! Maybe if we ice your feet for a couple of minutes they’ll shrink and—”

They locked eyes and started to laugh. Big loud gales of raucous laughter that sent men and beasts scurrying from the room in search of safety. Claire rolled sideways on the top step, helpless with laughter, while Kathleen sat on the floor with her head on her mother’s knees, laughing until she cried.

It felt good to laugh, but it felt even better to hear her daughter’s laughter fill the room. She couldn’t remember the last time that had happened. Maybe it never had. The last ten years had been filled with so much pain, so much trouble, that laughter had always been in short supply. She had always loved her kids, protected them, tried to guide them, but she had never laughed with them, and it struck her now as a terrible shame.

She had always envied Aidan his easy relationship with Kelly and wondered why she found it so hard to achieve with her own children. But then her niece made everything easy. She had glided effortlessly between childhood and adolescence, then floated without so much as a ripple through her teens. Aidan hadn’t a clue what parenting was really about. He had never been forced to check his own child into a rehab center or spend sleepless nights praying she would be found after she ran off.

She placed a hand on her daughter’s mass of shiny-penny curls. They were cool and silky and sweet against her fingers, so different, so very different, from those lost days when even basic hygiene had been abandoned in favor of scoring more of whatever would keep her highest longest. God help her, but she hadn’t always believed Kathleen would win the battle, but somehow Billy—her heart twisted at his memory, so clear, so vital—had always believed Kathleen would find her way back to them. He had given her hope when hers was long gone.

“Be careful, Mom,” Kathleen said after their laughter faded. “I don’t want you to get hurt.”

Claire frowned and looked down at the spiky shoes she had pulled from the closet. “I know I haven’t worn heels in years, but I think I can still keep my balance.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about.”

Claire started to laugh again. “Oh, honey, if you’re worried about David Fenelli, you don’t have to be. My heart isn’t in any danger.”

“I saw him this morning at the bar, Mom. I know he’s here in town.”

Her oldest. Her most troubled. The child who saw the most and said the least. The lightning rod for pain and trouble.

The only one who had known Corin was much more to her mother than just the brother of a new friend.

She took her daughter’s hand and squeezed it. “You don’t have to worry about me,” she said. “He’s here as a favor to a friend. He’ll be gone by the end of next week.”

“I don’t want him to hurt you again.”

“He never hurt me, honey.”

“I was there, Mom. I remember what happened.”

“He never did anything to hurt me, Kathleen. I was the one who hurt him.”

“I don’t believe you. I used to stand outside your door after we came back to New Jersey and hear you crying yourself to sleep.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, still holding her daughter’s hand. “I never wanted to worry you.”

“Don’t patronize me. I’m almost twenty-one. I think I can handle the truth. It’s not like I’m going to go out there and challenge him to a duel.” Kathleen met her eyes head on with an intensity Claire was all too familiar with. “I know about Dad. We all do. I know how hard it must’ve been for you.”