The Angel Tasted Temptation (16 page)

"Good. Did I tell you about your cousin Richard? He was arrested for bigamy. Can you believe that? I swear, the men in this family. They're either not marrying, or not staying married, or marrying women with all the choosiness of fleas on a dog. And then, your Uncle John—"

"Ma, I really don't have time for a family rundown right now," Travis said. "Can we catch up later?"

His mother paused, clearly not happy at having her gossip interrupted. "Have you talked to your father?"

"No." And since his father's number wasn't on his speed dial, there was no danger of that particular conversation tonight.

"Well, I think you should. Brad's getting married, you know, and we're all going to be together at the wedding. It would be nice if you mended a few bridges."

Travis shifted to get more comfortable. In the distance, he could see the white bow light of a passing boat on the water. "There aren't any bridges to mend."

"I swear, you're just like him. Stubborn as all hell."

"Ma, I'm kind of busy right now." Travis moved again but found the words "comfortable" and "concrete" didn't go together very well. "Can I talk to you later?"

"As long as you promise you'll support Brad's marriage. He's your brother, and he deserves that at least."

Travis sighed. "I will. I promise."

"And you'll be there, in a tux and with a date?"

"I'll be there." Assuming he could free himself from Vernon's idea of a good time, he would.

Finally, he seemed to have made his mother happy because she said good-bye and went back to watching one of the hundred different incarnations of
Law & Order
on her television in her condo in Miami.

On his third attempt, Travis managed to rhino-dial Kenny. He lowered his head beside the phone and waited for his roommate to answer.

"Call 9-1-1," Kenny growled after three rings, "because this line is busy."

"Kenny! Don't hang up!" Travis said. "I'm in a bind. Literally. And if you don't get your ass over here and help me, I'm going to be devoured by seagulls. Or worse, end up as a sex toy for some gigolo with a tape fetish."

On the other end, Kenny told someone to put that thought on pause, he'd be back. "Can you repeat that, Travis? There was a tongue in my ear. I thought you just said you were taped up."

"I am. I'm out at Castle Island, about halfway down the path to the fort. Just get out here and bring a sharp knife."

Travis swore he could hear Kenny laughing even after he'd hung up the phone.

When Kenny showed up a few minutes later, he started laughing the minute he rounded the corner and saw Travis on the ground. Travis raised his head off the pavement and saw the stubborn outline of a female standing a few feet behind Kenny. Under the soft glow of the streetlight, he could tell two things: she was blond and she was mad.

"Don't tell me you've crossed over to the light side of S&M," Kenny said, still chuckling. "Or in your case, the dark side of glue guns and tape."

"It's a long story. One I'll never tell you if you don't help get me out of this." Travis jerked his chin in the blonde's direction as Kenny bent down and started working on the tape with a pocketknife. "Is that your date?"

"Yeah. That's Delia. Though, after your untimely... interruption, there's been no dealing with Delia, if you know what I mean. She's the kind of woman who likes to see things to completion." Kenny released Travis's wrists and moved down to his ankles.

Travis sat up and ripped off the remaining tape, wincing when it took half the hair on his forearms with it. "I could have waited. Maybe."

"I'd much rather owe Delia later." Kenny paused in sawing through the gray tape and grinned at Travis. "For a guy with hairless wrists, you're not so bad looking."

Travis glanced down and let out a groan. A two-inch wide white stripe ringed both of his arms near his hands. "Aw, shit. How am I going to explain this at work tomorrow?"

Kenny tore the tape off Travis's jeans and released his ankles. "Don't worry about it. Just tell Larry your date got a little kinky. When his sense of morality is offended, his toupee always leans a little to the right." Kenny rose and slipped his knife into the back pocket of his jeans. "Now, if you wouldn't mind driving back to the apartment, I need to work on apologizing to Delia in the backseat."

Momma's Get-Better-and-Get-Home Corn and Crab Chowder

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

2 tablespoons butter

1 clove garlic, minced

2 potatoes, peeled and diced

1 onion, chopped

2 celery stalks, chopped

1 green pepper, diced

1 bay leaf

Dash each of salt and pepper

1 tablespoon Old Bay seasoning blend

3 tablespoons flour

2 cups chicken broth

4 cups milk

3 cups corn kernels, scraped from the cob

8 ounces cooked lump crab meat

Your baby is sick! Move fast on this one, because there's nothing like a good chowder to make her feel like her old self. Heat the oil and butter in a deep pot, then add the garlic and sauté. When it's as nice and fragrant as the air back home, add the potatoes, onion, celery and green pepper.

Season with salt, pepper and Old Bay. Cook for five minutes, then sprinkle with the flour and stir for a couple of minutes until the flour is cooked (raw flour isn't good for your sick girl). Add the broth and stir some more. Next, pour in the milk. Keep on stirring; don't complain to me about your arms hurting, this is, after all, for your ill daughter.

I mean, she
has
to be sick. What else can explain the way she's been acting? She's simply not herself, that's all there is to it. A little of Momma's cooking and she'll be back to normal in no time.

Once the chowder boils, add the corn and crab meat and simmer for five minutes, then taste it. Adjust your seasonings as necessary to make it perfect for your loved one's overall health.

Serve it to her with love and a big napkin. And if she tells you she's just fine, don't believe her. Instead, send in reinforcements as needed.

Kleenexes, a hot water bottle, three cans of Campbell's chicken noodle soup, a bottle of Vick's VapoRub, a package of Hall's cough drops and a can of Lysol disinfectant spray stared back at Meredith from inside the box. Marked on the included note were the words, "From home, with love and worry."

"Are you sick, dear?" Cordelia asked from beside her. Maria and Candace had left on sales calls, leaving Meredith alone to run the shop. It was still early in the morning and everything was quiet in the little set of stores located off of Atlantic Avenue. Cordelia, as had now become her morning custom, had stopped in the gift basket shop first, to share a cup of tea and, Meredith thought, find a bit of company.

Meredith sighed. "No. My mother thinks I have a cold. So she sent me some get-well items."

If her mother thought she was deathly ill, that could work in her favor.
Too ill to travel
, she could claim. Why hadn't she thought of that yesterday?

After last night, she and Ray Jr. had talked again and he'd agreed to a truce, thereby buying her some time. She'd dangled every bit of blackmail in her arsenal over his head... and it had worked.

Never underestimate a baby sister.

"Oh," Cordelia said with a smile, holding up the hot water bottle. "She's one of
those
mothers."

"Those mothers?"

"I had one when I was a child. Every sniffle meant a call to Doc West. Every cut was a chance to parade out the entire contents of the first aid kit. I loved my mother, but she was a suffocator."

Meredith laughed and closed the lid on the package that had arrived at Rebecca's that morning just as Meredith was leaving for work. She hadn't had time to open it then, and, half afraid Caleb might have included something morbid that would scar Rebecca's four-year-old daughter for life, she'd taken the box with her to work. "It's good to know I'm not the only one."

Cordelia patted her hand. "Our mothers love us, in their own way. You'll survive. I did." She withdrew her palm and straightened her little hat. "Though I thought she might have a heart attack at my wedding."

"Why?"

"Well, my true love, Richard, God rest his soul, worked in refuse. He didn't actually collect the trash, just processed the paperwork, but that made no difference to Mother. She never did touch him, not even so much as a hug at Christmas or a kiss on the cheek for his birthday, as long as she lived." Cordelia lowered her voice and moved closer. "Between you and me, it was just as well. Mother, who avoided germs like the plague, always had a cold and my Richard, who couldn't care less, never got the sniffles."

"Your mother and mine could have been twins, even cut out their Lysol coupons together on their spic-n-span kitchen tables," Meredith said. "What a shame about her and Richard, though."

Cordelia waved a hand in dismissal. "The loss was all hers. My Richard was the best man I ever knew. The good Lord took him from me last year and," she sighed, "my life has never been the same."

"I'm sorry," Meredith said, laying a palm on Cordelia's frail, thin arm.

"I miss him so much," she said, then drew herself up as if she'd lingered enough on self-pity. "The shop's just not the same without him."

"You worked together?"

She laughed. "Oh no! Richard and I in the same room, eight hours a day? That's how murder-suicides happen. He was manager of the South Boston landfill, but he was also an antique curator. The man could spy a Stickly in a sea of Hefty bags from a thousand paces."

Meredith chuckled. "Now there's a talent."

"You betcha." Cordelia patted the box. "Your mother will come around. Or, she won't. Mine never did. I just learned to love her for loving me." Cordelia sighed. "Though I do miss her chicken noodle soup."

Meredith reached inside the box and withdrew one of the cans, handing it to Cordelia. "It's not quite the same, but it'll do in a pinch."

Cordelia's wrinkled face softened and her pillbox hat slipped a little from its jaunty position on the top of her silver bun. "You're a sweetie. All you girls are. If I'd ever had children ..." Her voice trailed off. She brought the red and white can to her chest and shook her head. "Thank you. Now I must get back to my shop."

Then she was gone, the little bell over the shop door tinkling as she headed to her own store in the next building.

Meredith had just stowed the box from her mother beneath the counter when she saw Vernon and Ray Jr. heading into the shop. "Even though we decided to call a truce, I am never forgiving either one of you for what you did," she said.

"What? It was just a little duct tape." Ray Jr. put out his hands in a who, me? gesture, the sleeves in his cut-off red flannel shirt shifting with his bicep muscles as he did.

"A
little
duct tape? I know you guys and I know you never do anything halfway." Meredith shook her head and pushed through the glass door into the kitchen with Cordelia's empty tea cup in her hands, muttering as she put it in the sink. She tied on a bright white cotton apron, then pulled out ingredients for cookies and set up the mixer to begin baking the day's orders. Her brothers followed her, taking up stations on either side of the stainless steel counter.

"Besides, when we went back there, he was already gone," Vernon said. "Couldn't have done that good of a taping job if he got out that quick."

Meredith didn't care if Travis had escaped as fast as Harry Houdini. What her brothers had done went beyond a prank. She pointed at the door. "You two get in the truck and go home before I climb in the back, find Cecil's shotgun behind the seat and shoot you both."

"You don't even know how," Vernon said.

Meredith wheeled around and faced the younger of her brothers. He was now sporting a Patriots ball cap, Patriots T-shirt and even had the matching bandana hanging out of the back pocket of his Levi's, as if he'd been captured by a bunch of tourist aliens and whisked up to their souvenir mother ship. "I do too. I went skeet shooting with you guys last summer, remember?"

"And she whipped our asses, too," Ray Jr. muttered. "Cost me fifty bucks and a whole damned box of clay pigeons."

"Oh, yeah. I remember." Vernon shuffled in place.

"Never bet against your baby sister," Meredith said, wagging a finger at him. "And never tape up her date and leave him to the vultures."

"There ain't no vultures in Boston," Vernon said.

She grabbed the large metal mixing spoon on the counter and marched over to her brother, bringing her five-foot-four height straight up to his six-foot-two chest. As she spoke, she tapped it against his chest. "Vernon Estel Shordon, if I ever catch you within ten feet of Travis, I will kill you. I love you, but I'll
still
kill you."

Vernon took a step back, a sheepish look on his face. "We were just trying to help."

"Help who? You? Momma? Not me. This is not what I want. I like Travis. I didn't ask you to tape him up." She turned to look at Ray Jr., who was smartly keeping his mouth shut. "Now if he breaks my heart, fine, I'll let you two have at him. But until then, let me live my life. Please."

Vernon let out a sigh. He took off the hat and dangled it in his hands. His blond hair stuck up in a wave, then flattened against the rest of his skull where the hat had rested. "What are we gonna tell Momma?"

"Tell her I'm fine. I'm taking my vitamins, not going outside with my hair wet and eating my broccoli."

"That's it?"

"That's it." She turned toward the cabinet of dry supplies and pulled out flour, sugar and baking powder, laying the containers on the counter.

"But—" Vernon waved his hand over her, indicating the new haircut, the blue cowl-neck shirt and short black pencil skirt she wore today, hidden beneath an apron now. "What about all... this?"

"You tell her I'm fine," she repeated, returning to the cabinet for chocolate chips, "and I won't tell Dad you took off your Fighting Irish hat. You know how he feels about Notre Dame. And Notre Dame traitors."