Tangled Thing Called Love (26 page)

He moved over, making room for her, worried that she’d still change her mind, but that was the funny thing about women—they were suckers for wounded warriors, and here he was with his pathetic, damaged head, and he intended to milk this thing for all it was worth.

Mazie gazed at Ben’s face in the soft lamplight, the white bandage on dark hair giving him a rakish look. Then his arms were around her and she closed her eyes as his mouth found hers in a sizzling kiss. He dragged his mouth away, murmuring something in French against her throat. She had trouble with French verbs but got the gist of what he intended to do.

His hands roamed her body, and she loved their size, their roughness, their eagerness to touch. She arched her back, wanting him everywhere at once. He cupped her breasts, thumbing the nipples, then moved his head down to suck. Mazie’s hands knotted in his hair as nearly unbearable pleasure rippled through her body, setting up a hot, desperate
ache between her legs.

His head moved lower as he kissed her knees, her thighs, roughly pulled down her panties, now soaked with her wetness, and parted her, teasing her slick flesh, making her groan in pleasure; but that was just the come-on, the opening band for the main act. He found her clitoris, rigid and quivering, and flicked it with his tongue. It made her wild and she thrust upward at him in desperation, wanting more, needing more, her breath coming in short pants, her entire body taut. Then he sent her over the edge, convulsing in pleasure, gasping his name.

She barely had time to draw breath before Ben moved over her, forcing her thighs farther apart and thrusting into her with a hard, urgent stroke. Her vagina had tightened up during all those weeks without him, and now it burned slightly as it stretched to accommodate his thickness. Ben was gasping, groaning in pleasure, and she recalled for a panicked moment that a man with a head injury should not be doing this, but then her concern for him was swept away in her own selfish, overriding need. Ben stroked harder and harder, propelling them both toward what they so desperately needed. Mazie felt her insides quiver as a second, more powerful orgasm built up. She wasn’t expecting it to happen so quickly and was surprised when it began, surging through her body in escalating waves, giving her a pleasure so intense it was almost painful. Feeling her clench around him, Ben began to climax, uttering a groan that seemed to wrench from the depths of his being, going rigid in every muscle, and finally releasing.

Afterward, they were both quiet for a moment, the only sound their rapid breathing. As it gradually slowed, they looked into each other’s eyes and smiled.

“That was amazing,” Ben said, stroking Mazie’s sweaty hair out of her eyes.

“
You
were amazing,” she said, curling up against him, lightly kissing his shoulder, which smelled very faintly of lemon juice.

He eased her up against him into a more comfortable position and kissed the top of her head. “Mazie?”

“Hmm?”

“You really know how to monitor a guy.”

Chapter Thirty

Ben dropped Mazie off at the BZ Garage at noon the next day.

His brain hadn’t leaked fluid, his eyes were bright, and he looked remarkably healthy for a man who had been awake most of the night making love to the woman who was supposed to be seeing to it that he didn’t overexert himself. They’d finally fallen asleep in each other’s arms, but Mazie had wakened at five o’clock, dragged herself out of Ben’s bed, and sneaked down to her bedroom before the boys got up and started asking awkward questions.

The plan was for Ben to drive back to the farm and twin-sit until late in the afternoon, when he’d bring the boys to town to watch their aunt in the pageant parade. All the members of Mazie’s family were invited along on the pageant cruise scheduled for after the parade, but Gran hated boats and Scully, who knew his sons too well to trust them on a water-going vessel, planned to take the boys to a movie instead. It would be just her and Ben on the boat tonight. A sea cruise—well, a
lake
cruise. It sounded romantic.

Very
romantic, if Ben’s scorching good-bye kiss was any indication. Weak in the knees and a little sore in the nether regions, Mazie walked into the garage.

The garage sat on a now-abandoned military airfield; it had once been a hangar. It was a glorified Quonset hut that looked as though an enormous corrugated steel drum had been sawed in half and plunked into the ground. At the end of the Second World War, a newly discharged pilot named Bernie Zuff had bought the hangar, converted it into an automotive repair shop, and named it BZ Garage. Eventually his son took over the business, then his grandson, and now Buzzy ran it, the fourth generation of Zuffs to operate the garage.

Although it was bright and sunny outside, the garage was dimly lit, the bulbs dangling from the high, arched ceiling creating canyons of shadow in the windowless interior. Scully’s pickup was parked near the west wall, hunkered low on its rims. This morning Mazie had phoned a tow service and arranged to have the truck hauled from Skifstead Road to the garage. Buzzy was tightening the lug nuts on a trailer hitch when
Mazie entered. He came over, wiping his hands on a greasy rag.

“Morning, Buzzy.” Mazie gave him a big smile. She felt like smiling at everyone today.

Buzzy didn’t smile back. He wasn’t a people person. He was a car person. Short and stocky, he had a round head, wide mouth, and pugnacious jaw. He wore glasses on an elastic band over small, weak eyes and was never seen without his Chicago Cubs cap.

“Tires,” Buzzy said by way of greeting, holding up three fingers. “You need three new tires. The fourth one was okay.”

At least she thought that was what he said; Buzzy was a mumbler. “Make it a complete set,” Mazie said. She’d apologized to Scully for his truck getting vandalized, but her brother had brushed it off, told her the truck had needed new tires anyway, and that his insurance company would pay because it was a case of vandalism.

“You got to pay in advance,” Buzzy said.

Coming from anyone else, this would have been rude, but Buzzy had never picked up social niceties. His thing was taking care of cars, not people’s feelings. She followed him into his office at the back of the garage and waited while he worked an ancient, crank-handled adding machine. Everything here was old and decrepit. The battered desks, the file cabinets, and the threadbare swivel chairs all looked as though they’d been purchased at an army surplus sale in 1959. Mazie was willing to bet that not a single thing had changed since Fawn had worked here. Had she perched on
that
office chair, worked at
that
grease-stained desk with the rusty dent in its drawer?

Mazie could barely tell a wrench from a pair of pliers, but even to her untrained eyes, the garage looked outmoded. The hydraulic lube rack was probably the original equipment, the tool drawers were rusty, and oil-stained barrels and old batteries were piled about higgledy-piggledy. Decades of exhaust fumes had blackened the walls and ceiling, and the tools hanging haphazardly from the pegboards looked old and worn. Still, Buzzy’s business didn’t appear to be suffering; there were a dozen vehicles sitting around on the floor awaiting repairs. A camping trailer sat at the rear of the garage—probably the one Fawn had referred to as “the potmobile.”

Mazie’s attention flickered to the TV on a wall shelf, set to a Madison news channel. The sound was off, but obviously they were running the story of Derek Ralston’s
murder. A reporter was doing a live on-camera from the parking lot behind the grain elevator.

Buzzy punched the tire sale into the cash register. He only accepted cash or checks, refusing to wrangle with the paperwork entailed by dealing with insurance companies. Scully had given Mazie a check for the tires, telling her he would hash things out with the insurance company later.

“When can I pick up the truck?” Mazie asked.

Buzzy took off his baseball cap and ran a greasy hand through thinning strands of reddish-gray hair. “Four o’clock is the earliest I can have it done. I close at five.”

She couldn’t pick it up before five because the cruise began right after the parade and was supposed to last three hours. “I can’t get back here until nine o’clock,” Mazie explained.

Buzzy rubbed his nose, thought for a while. “I can leave the back door open. I’ll hide the key under the truck mat.” He showed her the button that would raise the bay door, allowing her to drive the truck out. The door’s sensor would reclose it automatically afterward.

Mazie left and walked the few blocks downtown. She was wearing a sleeveless coral top and a denim skirt, but even that was too hot for the mid-nineties heat and the undies-soaking humidity. She’d forgotten to put on sunscreen, and she could feel her upper arms burning. Thunderstorms were predicted to rip into the area later that day, and already clouds were amassing on the horizon.

People were drifting toward Main Street carrying lawn chairs, and there was that feeling of expectancy in the air that a small-town parade engenders. The Quail Hollow Community Band was warming up on the courthouse square, sweating in their wool uniforms, bleating out an off-key rendition of “God Bless America,” and a bevy of beauty queens was hurrying toward the high school to change into their gowns for the parade.

A custodian unlocked the teachers’ lounge and everyone surged in, laughing and chattering. Mazie wished she hadn’t pigged out on lasagna last night. Even on an empty stomach the Jovani gown was a tight squeeze; she’d be lucky to get it zipped up. She’d planned on wearing the hot pink dress, her old pageant gown for the parade, but her brush with the werewolf had trashed the gown beyond any salvaging. So it would have to be the
Jovani.

She took down the garment bag, unzipped it, and pulled out the gown. Except—there
was
no gown! The dress had been torn to pieces! It looked as though someone had ripped it down the middle, then gouged and slashed it with a knife until the dress was torn into fragments the size of quilt scraps. Torn-off beads and sequins lay in pathetic drifts at the bottom of the garment bag.

The other women crowded around, gasping and uttering shocked little cries.

“Who would do such a thing?” Holly shrieked.

“It’s all right,” Mazie said numbly, because beauty queens are supposed to be calm and self-possessed at all times. “It’s just a dress.”

“Just a dress?” snapped Tabitha Tritt-Shimmel, who looked as though all her blood had been sucked up into her flaming hair. “What do you mean ‘just a dress’? If the
Mona Lisa
was acid-bombed, would you say it was ‘just a painting’?”

Shoving aside Ashley Dorfmann, Tabitha got in Mazie’s face. “You never should have had that gown in the first place. You don’t have the height to pull it off. And you wouldn’t know a Jovani from a Jaclyn Smith special at Kmart! I would have looked so fucking terrific in that dress! I was going to buy it from you.”

“Maybe you should buy a personality instead,” sniped Darlene Krumke, who looked ready to remove her panty hose and strangle Tabitha with it.

Tabitha snatched her red sequined gown off the rack, executed a perfect about-face, marched across the room to the bathroom, and slammed the door. The other women began checking their gowns to see whether theirs had been vandalized too, but after a few minutes it became clear that Mazie’s had been the only one targeted.

“You need to report this to the police,” Gretchen Wuntz informed her. “Was the dress insured?”

“No,” Mazie said. “Who insures dresses?”

“I’m sorry, Mazie,” said Rosie Martinez, patting her shoulder. “But at least nobody was hurt.”

“That’s not the point,” Holly yelled. “The point is, who’s the sick, sadistic slut who trashed Mazie’s outfit?”

“They would have needed a key to get in here,” Channing pointed out. “But only
the school principal and the custodians have keys.”

“Mazie,” Holly said, “did you piss off a janitor?”

“Don’t be silly,” Darlene said. “Poor old Mr. Wisnowski wouldn’t do this.”

“People are in and out of this school all day,” Rosie pointed out. “Anybody could have gotten hold of a key—they’re hung on a hook in the office. Unless … maybe this door wasn’t locked when we left last night. Who was the last one out?”

“Me,” said Sophie Olson.

Holly gave her a hard look. “So you have a key?”

“No, I don’t have a key, Miss Bitch.” Sophie narrowed her eyes at Holly. “I set the lock and pulled it closed. I tested it to make sure it was locked. Mazie Maguire isn’t the only one with a nice dress, you know. For your information, my gown is from Nordstrom and cost fifteen hundred bucks.”

“Maybe Mazie did it herself,” Ashley Dorfmann said.

Everyone swung around to stare at Ashley, who’d disliked Mazie from the start and hadn’t made a secret of it.

“Why would I do that?” Mazie asked.

Ashley played with the zipper of her own mint-green gown. “Because—
you
know,” she mumbled.

“Because
what
?” Holly asked.

Ashley flushed. “Because she’s a
convict
,” she yelled defiantly. “They do crazy things! They’re not normal!” She looked around at the others. “Come on, don’t pretend you weren’t all thinking the same thing.”

“Ashley Dorfmann!” Channing shook a finger at her. “That’s despicable. You ought to apologize.”

“Why should I? It’s true, isn’t it? She
is
a criminal! I almost had to drop out of the pageant because my parents didn’t want me associating with trash like her.”

Channing clapped her hands sharply and everyone looked over at her. “Just stop it, ladies! We can’t start fighting among ourselves. Let’s worry about this later and find Mazie a gown right now. Sophie, you and Mazie are about the same size—do you have something she could borrow?”

“No, I do not!” Sophie snapped. Turning her back, she started undressing. “It’s
her
problem. I already did my bit. I lent her my leggings and she returned them with the butt all stretched out of shape. I’ll tell you what
I
plan to do—worry about myself for a change instead of feeling sorry for Mazie Maguire.”