Love in Maine (11 page)

Maddie nodded.

Janet continued. “Well, it’s none of my business. I promised Hank that if he moved
in over the garage, I would never ask him a single word about where he was going or
what he was doing.” She sat up a little straighter. “And I said he wasn’t to ask me
any of those types of questions about my private life, either.”

Maddie’s eyebrows lifted. “Really?”

“You don’t have to look so surprised. I have someone I like to see sometimes, but
it’s a little complicated, as they say these days, so we’re pretty quiet about the
whole thing. And I certainly wouldn’t want
his
mother asking me what I’m doing with
him
.”

Maddie smiled her gratitude. “Thanks.”

“I wasn’t ever going to judge you or anything. I can see now that neither of you are
trying to be hurtful.”

“Ha!” Maddie laughed once. “Yeah, not on purpose, at least. Sins of omission and commission,
right?”

Janet smiled. “There’s a reason they’re both sins, don’t you think? Because we feel
bad afterwards, whether we meant to or not. Or, at least, I hope we feel bad after.
Otherwise, we’re really in trouble.”

“You’re a really good person, Janet. How did I get so lucky to find you?”

Janet stood up and turned off the light next to the sofa. “Some things are just meant
to be, I guess.”

“Thanks again for the talk.”

Janet paused at the bottom of the stairs, then turned her face to Maddie. “Don’t be
too hard on him.”

Maddie exhaled. “I’ll try. Seeing as I’m so much bigger and stronger than he is.”

Janet smiled at the irony. “Good-night, Maddie.”

“Good-night, Janet.”

The next day, Maddie’s new best friend at work, a thirty-eight-year-old mother of
two named Sharon, was bemoaning the fact that she and her husband never got to go
out anymore.

“I’ll babysit for you,” Maddie said.

“Oh, I can’t afford a sitter.”

“You don’t have to pay me. I’ll think of something nice you can do for me. Give me
a manicure or something. I’m crap at that. Let me do the babysitting. I feel like
such a waste of space when I’m not at work.”

Sharon stared at her.

“What?” Maddie looked up to meet her eyes. The two of them were sitting in one of
the back booths cleaning all the condiments before the weekend closing.

“Why aren’t you out on a date?”

“With whom?” Maddie laughed.

“With any of the nine hundred guys who’ve been coming in here the past two weeks checking
out your short shorts!”

“They have not!”

“Oh, cut it out. It’s me, Sharon, remember? I know what it’s like to have long firm
legs and like the feel of a man’s eyes on them. Cough it up. Who’s the guy?”

Maddie’s stomach fell. “Who’s what guy?”

“The guy you must be thinking about to ignore all those other guys.”

“Who says I’m ignoring anyone?”

Sharon rolled her eyes, then stared at Maddie with wide-eyed meaning. “I heard you
tell that guy Ned that you were a lesbian!”

They both started laughing. When she’d calmed down enough to talk, Maddie stammered,
“With him as the only alternative? I probably am!”

The infectious laughter spread between them, and Maddie felt
good
for the first time in a week, the carefree kind of
good
that was her usual default. None of that broody Hank Gilbertson crap weighing her
down.

“Just let me watch your kids, and you go get all dolled up and surprise that cute
husband of yours.”

“He
is
pretty cute, isn’t he?”

Cute
was an understatement; Sharon’s husband was superhot. He came in for coffee every
morning after dropping the kids off at day care. Left twenty minutes later after reading
the paper and blowing Sharon a kiss. He worked at Bath Iron Works, and they’d just
bought the house of their dreams, a run-down Victorian over near Janet’s house.

“Come on, admit it. You want to go to the movies, then make out with him in the parking
lot.”

“You are such a bad influence, Madison Post!”

“That she is.” The deep voice came from the front of the diner, and Maddie’s head
swung around so fast she almost pulled a muscle in her neck. She leapt up from the
table and ran into the open arms of the tall, handsome man by the door.

“Jimmy! You jerk!” She hugged him and didn’t let go for a long time.

“Hey. You okay? Let me look at you . . .” He held her chin between his index finger
and thumb. “What’s going on? Ready to come home?”

She leaned her face into his palm and closed her eyes. He smelled like home. Like
the laundry detergent they’d all grown up using and Ivory soap and family.

A few seconds passed, and she stood up straight. “No. I’m not going to lose this bet!”
she whispered, then poked him in the chest. When she was done poking him, she straightened
the Windsor knot of his Hermès tie and pulled his hand into hers, tugging him down
the length of the restaurant to introduce him to Sharon.

“James Post, this is Sharon MacKenzie. Sharon, this is my pain-in-the-ass brother
Jimmy.”

Sharon looked momentarily disappointed, then stood up and shook his hand. “Nice to
meet you, Jimmy. What brings you to Blake?”

He pulled Maddie close and draped one arm possessively around her shoulders. “Had
to see how H-R-H was surviving.”

Sharon cocked an eyebrow. “H-R-H?”

“Her royal highness,” Jimmy said.

“Not literally!” Maddie laughed. “It’s just a hideous nickname my brothers use to
torment me.”

“Oh.” Sharon looked from Maddie to Jimmy and back to Maddie. “I get it. I thought
he might be the guy who was keeping you from the rest of the guys.” Sharon smiled
and sat back down at the booth to finish with the condiment bottles.

Jimmy widened his eyes to question Maddie. “Guy?”

“Don’t even think about it!”

“Okay! I won’t pry. Want to go out for dinner, Mad?” Jimmy asked.

“I can’t. I just offered to babysit for Sharon while she goes on a much-needed date
with her husband.”

“Why don’t the four of us go out?” Jimmy asked, trying to be inclusive.

Sharon stared at the man standing there in front of her, who looked like he’d just
walked off an Italian menswear fashion runway. She read
People
magazine. She knew Prada when she saw it. Which had been never, in real life, until
right now.

“I’m not sure—” Sharon answered slowly.

Jimmy interrupted Sharon with a quick lift of his chin. “Come on. It will be fun.
We can go to the big hotel over in Wiscasset, then I can leave straight from there—”

Maddie pinched him hard on the side of his stomach before he finished that sentence
with the fact that his private jet was in the Wiscasset private airfield, waiting
for a call from him to start the engines.

“Ow, what was that for?” Jimmy asked.

“Just stop being so bossy!” Maddie replied. “Sharon is going out with her husband.
I am babysitting. You are leaving.”

“Wow. Some welcome wagon. I was up at the Universal Paper factory—”

“Enough!” Maddie knew all about Universal Paper, and every other factory in Maine
that her family owned. “Get out of here. I’m fine—” She pulled away from him and threw
her arms wide. “As you can see.”

“All right. I’ll tell Mom and Dad I saw you, and you are the same loose cannon you
always were—”

“Hey! That is so not true. Tell him, Sharon. I’m a good worker, right?”

Sharon watched the verbal sparring and put her hands up, palms out. “I’m not getting
into any sibling rivalry. Maddie’s a great waitress. That’s just a fact.”

“Okay, okay.” Jimmy shook Sharon’s hand. “Nice to meet you. Have fun on your date
tonight.”

“Thanks. I think we will.”

Maddie took his elbow and steered Jimmy back toward the front of the diner. “Thanks
for checking on me.” She squeezed his hand.

Jimmy paused and turned to face her. “It was just a silly bet, Maddie. You don’t need
to turn it into some big thing.”

For some reason the mention of “some big thing” threw her into a slew of memories
about Freud and Epictetus and Hank. And kissing. She shook her head.

“It’s not a thing. I’m having a really great summer. You were right; you might as
well rub my nose in it. I needed to work like this. I’m good at it.”

Jimmy stared at her, assessing her. “Okay. But don’t—”

“Stop.” Maddie laughed. “I’m fine. I promise I’ll call if I get hit by a bus or something,
I’m not going to chew my own arm off to prove a point.”

He smiled then, and she stood up on her toes and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “I’m
really glad you found me. Give a big hug to Mom and Dad for me.”

“Will do. Bye, Sis.”

She rolled her eyes at the despised nickname and held the door open for him to leave.
He got into the chauffeur-driven black Jaguar, and she couldn’t see the slightest
hint of him behind the blacked-out window tinting once he shut the door.

When the car pulled away, she happened to look across the street, only to see one
pissed-off Henry Gilbertson sitting in his truck, staring at her. He shook his head
once, started the engine, checked his rearview mirror, and pulled onto Main Street
. . . without looking at her again.

She shut the door to the diner and flipped the deadbolt. She turned the “Closed” sign
to face out and let the horizontal blinds drop the length of the door with a satisfying
metal clatter.

Good, she thought, let Hank think I’ve got some sugar daddy who swoops in to visit;
he already thinks I’m a tramp anyway.

“I’ll babysit anytime you want,” Maddie offered when she sat back down. “Why don’t
you and Gerry go away for the whole weekend?” Anything to keep me away from the Gilbertsons,
Maddie thought desperately.

Sharon looked at Maddie. “You okay?”

“Why does everyone keep asking me that?!” Maddie was too loud and too mad for it to
sound offhand. “I mean, probably not. But yes, I’m fine.”

Sharon reached across the table, their chore finished. “Come on. Let’s go back to
my house and have a glass of wine. I’ll give you that manicure and pedicure this afternoon
before I get all dolled up for tonight.”

“Thanks, Sharon. That sounds perfect.”

The two of them took off their short, black, pocketed aprons, tossed them into the
industrial laundry container, and let themselves out the back. The heavy metal door
locked automatically behind them.

The house was dark when Hank finally pulled into the driveway. He’d driven on back
roads for a couple of hours to erase the vision of Maddie straightening that bastard’s
tie with that dreamy, faraway look in her eyes. Hank could see from across the street
that she felt relieved to be back in his arms. Why wouldn’t she? He looked rich enough.
And, if Hank was honest, he looked like the type of guy who would probably make an
effort to talk to her after spending one of the best times he could remember wrapped
in her arms.

So she’d been slumming it all along, just like he’d suspected. Hank tried to thicken
his defenses. She was obviously using him and her job at the diner and the middle-class
town of Blake and her whole summer vacation to do some sort of sociology project for
her final year at Brown. He could just imagine her thesis title: “How I Spent My Summer
Observing the Little People.”

Janet’s car was gone, and he figured the two women had taken his advice and gone for
a girls’ night out. They wouldn’t be home for at least another hour. He took his chances
on getting some leftovers out of the fridge in his mother’s kitchen.

The small light over the stove was on, and the purple shadows of the outdoors were
enough for Hank to walk in and open the fridge without turning the overhead light
on. He pulled out a soda, popped the top, and took a big pull. He rummaged around
in the fridge and pulled out a drumstick and a glass bowl of his mother’s famous coleslaw.
He kicked the fridge shut with his foot and left the house.

Two hours later he heard a rumbling engine—definitely not his mother’s small, Japanese
compact and definitely not that other guy’s chauffeur-driven Jaguar from this afternoon—and
then the singing strains of Maddie’s voice.

“I had a great time. I mean it, if you want to have fun again tomorrow night or next
weekend, just let me know.”

A man’s deep grateful voice replied in syllables Hank couldn’t make out. He couldn’t
see the car without craning his neck out his bedroom window, and there were depths
to which he would not stoop. That was one of them.

She laughed into the night. “I’d love that, too. Have a great rest of the weekend.”

She slammed the door of the guy’s car and called out, “Bye! Thanks for the ride!”
Maddie was probably watching the new man in her life pull out of the driveway, savoring
every last glimpse of the latest bastard to come through her revolving bed.

Hank knew he was being an idiot. Nothing made sense anymore, especially when he thought
about Madison Post. He was scraping his nails against the bristled texture of his
scalp when a fist pounded on his apartment door.

“Who is it?” he asked as he pulled the door open.

She slammed the flats of her hands into his chest. He was surprised by the force of
her, and stumbled back a step.

“What the
hell
is your problem?!” she cried. She shoved him again, further into the room. “You never
kissed a girl and just acted like a normal human being after?” She pushed him again,
but he caught her wrists this time. Maddie tried to pull her hands free then realized
the futility of the effort.

“Stop hitting me,” Hank said softly.

Her lip started to shake and she tried to pull her hands again. She needed them to
cover her face. “Don’t talk to me in that soft voice, you bastard.” The fight was
draining out of her.

“How do you want me to talk to you, Maddie?” He hated himself, knowing that she’d
been with those two other guys today, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. When
he felt the pounding beat of her pulse, where his thumbs were resting against her
wrists, it pounded into him as well. “How do those other guys talk to you?”