Skinny Dipping (32 page)

“I’m thinking of trying my hand at ice fishing,” he announced. “Ever been ice fishing, Prescott? No? How about you, Mimi?”

“Yeah,” she said. She flashed on an image of Joe and Prescott sometime next winter, sitting on overturned pails in companionable silence, fishing poles almost touching over a round hole cut in the ice between them, a thermos of hot chocolate at Prescott’s feet while waiting in blissful nonanticipation for fish that weren’t going to bite. And she wouldn’t be there. Because her chapter in Fowl Lake’s history would be over, done. Her chapter in
their
history, in
Joe’s
history, would be over, done.

Her throat closed. Damn it, damn it, damn. This is what you got when you ventured out of the safe shallows and dared the deeper waters of relationships. You floundered. You sank. You’d think she would have learned by now.

“Really?” Joe’s handsome head was tilted inquiringly. He looked so damnably…
friendly.

“Of course I have,” she said. “Whaddya think? That’s
my
lake out there. My
family’s
lake. I’ve been coming here all my life, spring, summer, winter, and fall. Of course I’ve been ice fishing: ice fishing, ice spearing, boat fishing, drift fishing, fishing with a bobber, fishing with a spinner, fishing with lures, fishing bait, bottom fishing, bass fishing—”

“Yo, Mimi!” Prescott intervened. “We get it. You’re like Babe Winkelman of Fowl Lake.”

Her rage left in a whoosh. The sting of tears started in her eyes. “When the Saints Go Marching In” began playing on her cell phone, saving her from making a scene. She grabbed the phone off the island and fled for the hallway.

She took a deep breath. “Hi, Jessica.”

“Hi, Mimi.” Mimi had long since gone from ‘Miss Em’ to ‘Mimi.’ There were no secrets between Jessica and her anymore. “Is Prescott there? And Sarah and Joe?”

“Yeah,” she said. “The gang’s all here.”

“Put me on speakerphone for a second, will you?”

“Sure.” Mimi pushed the appropriate button and held the phone through the door into the great room. “It’s Jessica,” she called. “Say hi.”

“Hi,” Jessica said.

“Hi, Jessica,” Joe and Prescott said in unison.

“How’s the class going?” Prescott asked. He’d discovered that Jess was taking night courses in Web site design at a local community college. He’d spent an hour one night on the phone with her, helping her pick her course load.

“Good. I wanted to thank you for your help.”

“Glad to do it,” Prescott mumbled, turning red.

“Okay, now you’ve embarrassed him, so I’m turning off speaker. Okay. How’re things?”

“Ah,” Jess gave a verbal shrug.

“Neil?”

“Not my soul mate.”

Relief washed through Mimi along with a weird feeling of pride in Jess. “That happens.”

“Thanks for not saying ‘I’m sure it’ll work out.’”

“You’re welcome.”

“I have a question.”

“Shoot.”

“I don’t know if you can really talk to my mom or not.”

“Okay.”

“But I like thinking that you can. So I’m going to assume you do.”

“Okay. So, what’s the question?”

Jessica hesitated. “The thing is, I don’t think Mom’s really had any advice for me since she died. I’ve been thinking about it, and mostly she’s just been…there. Like, I guess, she always was. Sometimes, like, too much.”

“Yeah, moms are like that.”

“Well, the thing is, I’ve been thinking and I’m not sure I really ought to be asking you what she says. I mean, it’s not like I’m talking directly to her. And, well, I think it’s probably good to do things without polling your mom all the time.”

“Yeah.”

Jess was quiet for a short time, then said softly, “I love her, you know.”

“I know.”

Jessica cleared her throat. “So, do you think Mom would be upset if I stopped contacting her through you?”

Oh, Jess.
“Nah.”

“Really?” she sounded surprised, but hopeful.

“Your mom doesn’t need to talk to you either through me or directly. Jess, your mom doesn’t
need
anything. She hasn’t since she died.”

She heard Jessica’s slight sigh, one of tension being released.

“You have to remember, Jess, you’re the one who called Straight Talk. You needed her, not vice versa.”

“I miss her.”

“Yeah.” She understood. Right now, she missed Solange.

Jess hesitated. “Can I still call, just to talk to you?”

“I’d be hurt if you didn’t.”

On the way back into the kitchen Mimi almost bumped into Joe.

“Prescott said Chez Ducky is being put up for sale soon,” he said. “I’m sorry, Mimi.”

Prescott, that informer. Mimi looked over Joe’s shoulder. Sarah had emerged from her sulk—and her room—and was sitting next to Prescott on the sofa. They were discussing whether Bill was cinnamon brown or nutmeg brown.

“I’ll just have to bow to the inevitable, I guess.” She’d tried to sound dismissive and knew she’d barely managed flat. She didn’t want a counseling session. She didn’t want anyone to tell her things would be all right.

He came closer, much closer than he’d been since she’d helped him from the car that first day back from the hospital. And this is why, she thought. She just wanted to melt into him, trade breaths, soak up his warmth. And she would have, too, with the slightest excuse, the least bit of encouragement. And then this would have been even harder. This being-left-behind crap. She couldn’t believe she had acted like such a histrionic hag.

“I’m sorry I went off like that,” she said. “It’s just that I can’t believe it’s not going to belong to the Olsons anymore. It’s like they’re pulling the plug on a family member. But Chez Ducky doesn’t
need
to die.”

His eyes met hers. “Chez Ducky doesn’t need anything,” he said. “It never has.”

She inhaled sharply. “You were eavesdropping!”

Joe nodded, unembarrassed. “You’re acting as if that place is a person. You know, Mimi, if you’d put half of all your emotional energy into someone who could actually return it…” He trailed off, his gaze locked on her face.

Her pulse started flip-flopping. She felt a rush of adrenaline, shooting her full of panic. Joe was leaving. Sarah was going to have a baby, and both of them would vanish. Her father was gone.

“Nah-uh,” she said, trying to laugh. “The thing about a place is that you always know where it is. It can’t just take off. It always stays the same.”

“
Nothing
stays the same.”

She knew that was true about most things better than most people did. Chez Ducky was different. It had to stay the same. It had to be here for her. Something did. Panic shredded her self-assurance.

“Mimi, would you say Bill is ginger colored?” Prescott called from the other side of the room.

“Mimi, while you’re over there, could you bring me a glass of milk?” Sarah asked.

Wiley, slouching in from his midmorning nap, brushed by her, went to the front door, and scratched at it.

She wanted to run. She wanted to flee back to the sweet oblivious bliss she’d known last summer and all the summers before. But here she was, in the dead of winter, tied through Joe and Prescott and the damn dogs and even Sarah—people who were going to go away and go on—to a place she was going to lose.

So she ran.

Joe stomped along the path between Prescott’s and Chez Ducky, every step jarring his knee. He figured it was as good a way as any to distract himself from the frustration that had been building inside over the course of an excruciatingly long month.

For four weeks he had lived in a state of acute physical discomfort. Some of this was due to his injured leg and shoulder. More often it was because he could not go to Mimi’s room and finish what they’d started on this very same damn beach almost six months ago. And the reasons for this were various: he wanted his limbs to be fully healed because he didn’t want to be groaning for any other reasons besides pleasant ones; he wanted his limbs to be fully functioning because he did not want to hear Mimi laughing for any other reasons besides pleasant ones; the proximity of his son’s room to every other bedroom in the house; the presence of Sarah, whom Mimi fussed over like an overzealous mother hen (and really, every time she said something like, “I don’t like being responsible for anyone or anything,” which was often, he had to stop himself from bursting into laughter); and finally, he was willing to admit it, because he was afraid.

This, possibly more than any other factor, had rendered him an incompetent, ineffectual, undecided, waffling wreck. Joe hated being a wreck. He did not waffle. He examined, assessed, organized, evaluated, and decided upon a course of action that benefited the most people for the greatest good.

But not this time. This time he was confounded by how high the stakes were. Nothing he could remember had ever been so important. To him. To them.

He hadn’t been part of a “them” in decades. He wanted to be that with her so badly, it neutralized all his effectiveness. And just when he’d felt better, like his leg and arm and all the stars were beginning to align, Mimi had gone off the deep end. She’d become moody, combative, and emotional. His bright, laughing, serene Mimi.

It only made him love her more. Because it provided proof of what he already knew, that Mimi wasn’t just drifting through life, detached and uninvolved—
Love her
? Joe stopped midstride. He tilted his head as though he heard something familiar and welcome and long overdue. Yes. He loved Mimi.

He found her in the parlor, sitting in the corner of a lumpy-looking sofa. She looked broody and rumpled, her shirt twisted around her waist, her bare feet curled under her. Her hair hung in a cloud of curls around her shoulders and her nose was red as though she’d been crying. She didn’t look up but continued to stare—make that glare—out the window. “Mimi.”

He moved toward her and banged his leg against a table. He strangled off a curse. “Would you look at me?”

“I’m busy.”

Yes, he had to acknowledge that fear had started to dominate the quixotic mixture of emotions he had regarding Mimi. He was afraid he was going to lose everything he’d found here. He was afraid his relationship with Prescott would fall back into the same pattern of him trying to fix Prescott and in the process make Prescott feel broken. He was afraid he’d lose the time he’d found, the time to wonder about cosmic things like why nature would make dogs intolerant of chocolate and not humans. He was afraid he’d lose the home he’d found here. Wherever he went, he was never more than a charming transient, a cordial guest with the power to upset lives. But here he’d been part of a quirky quasi-family complex, and Mimi was at the center of it. And that was the bottom line: he was afraid of losing Mimi.

He couldn’t lose her.

Just the thought made him feel desperate, and that feeling was so alien to Joe Tierney, he reacted badly to it.

“Would you please look at me?” he repeated tersely. “You’re being childish.”

She looked at him with exaggerated indifference, saw that he was limping, and shot up, disappearing into a back room.

“Walking out isn’t going to help,” he called after her. “I’ll just limp after you. It’ll be pathetic, ridiculous. Is that what you want?”

She returned with a glass of water and a small bottle of Tylenol. She set the glass down on the table with a bang and twisted open the bottle cap, tipping the bottle over her open palm without looking. Several capsules bounced into her hand. One bounced off her palm and onto the floor.

“Damn it,” she muttered and swooped down to pick it up. She held it up to the window and blew something off of it. “Here.” She held the glass and the pill out to him.

“You don’t expect me to take that?”

“Why not?”

“It’s been on the floor.”

“Oh, for the love of—It’s okay. I invoked the thirty-second rule.” Her tone was patronizing. “If it’s on the floor less than thirty seconds, no germs have time to get on it.”

“Just give me a different pill,” he demanded, holding out his hand. This was not how he’d envisioned this scene playing out. He was going to be charming, exude confidence, not whine about a damn pill. He had to be more masterful…

He knew snapping his fingers for the bottle of pills was a bad idea the minute they snapped.

Her eyes widened, then narrowed to dark slits that snapped every bit as loudly as his fingers had. “No.”

“Come on, Mimi. Don’t be absurd.”

“
Me
be absurd? No. Forget it.”

He was out of patience and out of his depth. He limped toward her. She held the contaminated pill over the open bottle.

“Don’t put that pill in there,” he warned.

She dropped the capsule in the bottle.

He lurched forward. She backed away, one brow climbing at a challenging angle, stuck her thumb over the top of the bottle, and shook.

He stared at her. “I cannot believe you just did that. Of all the petty…What am I supposed to do now?”

“Either take one of your pills like a normal, well-adjusted human being, or hobble back to the pharmacy and tell them the whole bottle was tainted by one that had fallen on the floor. I bet the pharmacist could use a good laugh.”

She swaggered toward him, heading for the door with exaggerated indifference. He watched her, paralyzed by how incapable he felt, how inept he’d been. Her chin tipped up and just as she passed, she reached out and her fingertips skated along his chest, etching a trail of sensation. “Touch,” she said defiantly.

He clasped her wrist and spun her around and into his embrace, not stopping until his mouth was on hers and her body was crushed against him. She made a sound deep in her throat, wrapped her arms around his neck, and kissed him back. Every shred of his uncertainty burned away. This was right. Perfect. Meant to be. Fate.

He held her face between his hands, his tongue tangling with hers as he moved them back toward the sofa, the pain in his knee numbed by the expectation of pleasure. She looped her arms around his waist and they fell back onto thick, soft, lumpy cushions.

This time, there was no prolonged torment of kisses and tongue, of hands making tentative excursions along ribs and stomachs and thighs. This time, urgency took over. Deep-throated moans were punctuated by gasps as he stripped off her shirt, revealing her breasts. He bent his head to her nipple, sucking it into his mouth. She arched back and he coiled an arm under her hips, pulling her tight against his groin, and pushing himself against the V.

She grabbed his shoulders, holding him back. “Wait. Wait.”

“Oh, God, no,” he said, swallowing. “We’re not going to talk, are we?”

She laughed. “No! No.” She shook her head, lifting her hips up and pushing her jeans off, kicking them away. Then her fingers went to work on the buttons of his shirt.

“Touch.” Her fingertips found his chest. He fell back, closing his eyes, bliss sheeting his skin at the feel of her hands on him, cool fingertips pushing open his shirt front.

“Touch.” Warm lips settled with delicious possessiveness against his stomach muscles.

“Touch.” Her tongue traced a damp trail down over his pectorals, down his abdomen and—He inhaled on a long, sweet hiss.

“Touch.”

Too much. Too damn much. He caught her by the shoulders and rolled her beneath him. He needed to be in her, to feel her surround him. He entered in one long, slow thrust, and she settled around him, wiggling a little to seat him deeper, her thighs like a vise around his flanks. He moved. She moaned.

“Oh. Oh, Joe. Ohhhh…that’s so…” She giggled but as soon as he started moving again the giggles turned into gasps, and then pleas and, finally, release.

A long time later—an impressively long time later, Joe thought—she lay spent in his arms. He moved the damp tendril away from her temple and kissed her gently. She turned her head toward him. Her dark eyes were dilated, her skin flushed and glistening, all that dark curly hair cushioning her head.

“You’re leaving,” she said softly.

“I’m coming back.”

She didn’t reply, but her gaze scanned his face, stopped at his eyes, looked at him with a mixture of despair and hope.

“I started the project and there are people in that company who deserve a second look.”

“You don’t let people down.”

He hoped she would understand. “I could. This time.”

She shook her head. “No. I like the way you are. That way.” She touched his cheek. She would never ask him to stay, he realized. She’d built a life around having no expectations, making no demands. It didn’t mean she didn’t need them.

“Don’t look like that.”

“Like what?’

“Worried. Resigned. I’ll be back.”

“If you say so.”

He kissed her once hard.

“You worry too much,” he murmured. He doubted anyone had ever said those words to Mignonette Olson.

She understood the irony. It was one of the things he most appreciated about her.

“I should try to be more like you,” she suggested. Her tone was amused.

“Definitely.”

Her breath was growing shallower as the exploration of his lips moved lower. “Relax.”

“Let it slide,” he suggested.

“Oh,” she said, “I intend to.”