Marrying Maddy (4 page)

Okay, so he'd been sneaky. Underhanded, even. But he'd known, just
known
that she wouldn't go along with his plans unless both the plans and the marriage were already accomplished facts. She'd certainly made that much plain to him a few weeks earlier, when she'd offered him her trust fund and he'd stormed out of her apartment, staying away for two entire days. Any longer, and he would have probably died from missing her.

As he'd been dead these past eighteen months, without her. And, according to Almira Chandler, Maddy hadn't been doing much better. She'd only done her damnedest to give that impression to anyone who hadn't known her and loved her since she was in diapers.

With one cheek stuffed full of peanut butter and fresh bread, he turned to Maddy once more. “Do you really believe I'm the sort of person who would plunk down a small fortune and move in next door to you a week before your wedding, just to drive you nuts?” He swallowed the lump of sandwich, thanking God the peanut butter didn't stick in his throat, just as his next words were sitting there, ready to do the same. “And what if I did? If you
don't love me, if you love this Garvey guy, what difference would it make to you?”

He took a short, calming breath, and let her have the rest of it, all of it. Everything he'd wanted to say to her for eighteen months.

“Would I do that? Just to, as you said, rub your nose in the fact—
fact,
Maddy, not dream—that I'd been right, that my ideas did have merit, were worth taking a chance on. Were worth
you
taking a chance on…if you'd really loved me. Damn straight I would!”

Maddy stood up slowly, looked Joe full in the face. Pronounced every word carefully. “I loved you, Joe,” she said quietly. “But you didn't trust me. Not enough to tell me the truth, that's for sure. You were just going to marry me, then blithely mention that, oh, yeah, I just sank every penny I have into a new business that could fall flat on its face, hope you don't mind. You didn't trust
me.
”

Now Joe felt his temper rising, the temper he had thought had cooled long ago, to be replaced by the damning knowledge that, if he were to become rich beyond his dreams—and he had—he would never be happy, complete, without Maddy by his side. He had to love her. If he didn't, he was just plain nuts to be putting himself back into a position where she could cut his knees, and heart, right out from underneath him.

And still, he couldn't help himself. He couldn't keep his big mouth shut, even though he knew Maddy was at least partially right. They were both partially right, and that was the problem. Because they were also both partially wrong.

“I didn't trust
you?
Oh, Mad, you sure have a
warped memory. You didn't trust
me.
But you did trust your trust fund, didn't you? If it had been up to you, we'd be living in that mansion over there, with me working for your brother and slowly suffocating. And all the while living on your trust fund. What was it you said? Oh, yeah, something about me
playing
with my
little idea
on weekends. It would have been easier if you'd treated me like a pet cat, and just had me neutered.”

“That's not fair!” Maddy exploded, giving the chair a push, only vaguely surprised when it toppled onto the floor with a small crash. “I offered you my trust fund, Joe, my home. You wouldn't take either of them. And b-besides, you didn't
have
to take a job with Ryan, it was just a suggestion.”

“Well, excuse me, but in the words of oppressed men everywhere—
hah!
You all but had me in some office, figuring out the price of yard goods. I'm a software designer, Maddy, not a guy who wants to live off his wife, play golf and slowly drink himself to death.”

“That's it, Joe,” Maddy exploded. “Twist everything around, forget about how you planned to figure
me
into this equation you'd worked out in your mind. You wanted me to be the little woman b-behind the man, living in some third-floor walk-up and trying to figure out another way to cook hamburger—all while you and Larry played at b-becoming the next B-Bill Gates. You didn't want a wife, Joe. You wanted a…a…”

She stopped dead, something he'd said repeating itself inside her head, driving out any other thoughts. “What do you mean, had you
neutered?
Are you actually standing there, saying that I wanted to rob
you of your
manhood?
That's not only unfair, it's ridiculous!”

Joe opened his mouth to lash out at her again, then belatedly reined in his temper, let his sense of humor rescue him from what would just turn into a pointless argument, the sort they'd had eighteen months ago. “So, Mad, do you still love me? I mean, I'd hate to think I bought this house just to drive you nuts.”

“
Ooooh!
How I hate you, Joe O'Malley. How I hate, hate,
hate
you!”

He took a single step toward her. “And you're being redundant, Maddy. Tell me, in an argument isn't the first person who becomes redundant the first person to have run out of logical points?”

“No, you miserable, rotten…the first person to take a swing at the other guy in an argument is the first one to have run out of logical points. And I'd be happy to run out of them, just so I could pop you one in the nose!”

“Hey, Mr. O'Malley, where do you want us to put your—” Chad stopped just inside the kitchen, looked at Joe, looked at Maddy. “Smoke and fire. Right. I forgot. I'll just have Butch put the desk where he wants, okay, and get back to you. Sorry about that.”

Joe waited until the workman was gone, then stabbed his fingers through his hair, still too long but definitely with a better cut. He looked at Maddy, looked straight past the hives, and saw the girl he'd met two years ago behind the glaring eyes of this near stranger who looked, hives, ponytail and all, so very grown up, so different from the girl he'd known. So different from the girl who'd left him
standing at the altar, or nearly so, and run home, run away from him. Taken his heart with her.

“I still love you, Maddy,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “Is it really too late for us? Have I left it too late?”

Maddy felt as if she had swallowed broken glass, the shards having popped whatever balloon of indignation she might have had inside her. “I'm getting married next Saturday, Joe. What do you think?”

“I think I may have left it too late,” he admitted, taking a single step in her direction. “I think I should never have let you go in the first place.”

The feeling was beginning to come back into her upper lip as the antihistamine belatedly kicked in. All the better to yell at Joe O'Malley, Maddy thought meanly. “I left you,” she said, suddenly realizing that a single tear had run down her cheek, but she refused to wipe it away. “You
made
me leave you. It doesn't matter that you're successful now, Joe, just as it didn't matter that you weren't successful eighteen months ago. Don't you understand yet? It was that you wouldn't bend, not even an inch. You wouldn't take the money I offered, you wouldn't even tell me what you were doing because you knew I'd hate it. You just wanted me to give, and give, and give….”

“
Give?
Maddy, Maddy, Maddy, how many times do I have to tell you that I didn't want your money,” Joe said, deliberately misunderstanding as he took another step forward, reaching into his back pocket for his handkerchief, which he could use as an excuse to touch her, be close to her.

And maybe so he wouldn't shake her, for having
grown so much, gained so much logic, and so many weapons to use against him, to make him see himself as he didn't want to be seen. As a selfish jerk with more pride than brains…

“No, you didn't. And you didn't want
me
to have it, either. You wanted to jump out of a plane without a parachute and take me with you. It never occurred to you that
I
had a life before I met you, that
I
might not be equipped, practically or emotionally, to find the joy you thought there would be in poverty.”

“Money,” Joe bit out, shaking his head. “It always comes back to that, doesn't it?”

“Doesn't it, Joe? Tell me, would you be here at all if your idea had fallen flat? If you couldn't come here in that sports car I saw out front, and plunk down the money for this house? If you'd loved me,
really
loved me, wouldn't you have come after me when I first flew home from Las Vegas? I waited, Joe. I waited, and you didn't come. You're only here now to hurt me, as I hurt you eighteen months ago. Admit it to me, Joe, even if you can't admit it to yourself.”

He was silent for long moments. “You've grown up,” he said at last.

“I had no choice, Joe. One of us had to. Enjoy your new house, and stay out of my life,” she said, then whirled on her heels and walked toward the front door, her head held high.

Until Joe's words stopped her.

“Does your fiancé know about me, Maddy?”

She closed her eyes, willed her chin not to wobble. “No, Joe,” she admitted quietly. “He doesn't. Only Allie and my sister and brother. No one else. Which is why I know my meddling grandmother
brought you here, because Jessie was as surprised as I was, and Ryan is too honest and upright to even think of something so nasty.”

“But Mrs. Chandler isn't that honest and upright?”

His voice came from directly behind her, and she flinched as he put his hands on her shoulders.

“My grandmother lives by her own rules, and never knows when to back off,” Maddy said, ducking out from beneath Joe's hands, his warm touch. His so inflaming touch.

“I like your grandmother.”

That did it. Maddy whirled around, gave him a push with both hands. “Good, then you marry
her. I'm
marrying Matthew Garvey.”

“Are you, Maddy? Are you really? You wanted this house. I got it for you. I can get you anything you want, with the possible exception of the moon, but I hear it's nothing but rocks anyway. I can give you everything you wanted me to give you eighteen months ago.”

To her complete surprise, but not to Joe's, who had known he was pushing her too far the moment he opened his mouth, Maddy slapped him hard across the cheek, and ran out of the house.

“Stupid, O'Malley,” Joe said, punching the wall. “Stupid, stupid,
stupid!
”

“S
o, is it safe to come out now?” Almira Chandler asked her granddaughter as she marginally opened her bedroom door and let Jessie slip inside.

Maddy had stomped back into the house a half hour earlier, the fading hives still standing out stark white in her otherwise tear-reddened face, waving her hands and tightly warning her grandmother: “
Don't
…talk to me!”

“I think so,” Jessie answered now, sitting down on her grandmother's favorite chair. “She's downstairs, in the family kitchen, whipping up a cake or something. Whatever it is, she isn't using the electric mixer, and I sort of feel sorry for the spoon she is using. Congratulations, Allie. You really did it this time.”

Almira patted the front of her dress as she turned, admiring her reflection in the mirror. “Yes, I did, didn't I. Sometimes I even amaze myself.”

Jessie had come to her grandmother's room to scold her. But how did you scold a woman like this?

“You're incorrigible. I don't think it would be a good idea if you were to look quite so pleased with yourself the next time you see Maddy. She's really upset, and I don't blame her one bit.”

“Of course she's upset,” Almira said, waving Jessie out of the pink-and-white chintz chair, so she could sit down. She inspected her cherry-red fingernails, frowned when she saw a small chip in one nail. “You didn't really think she'd be thrilled, did you, darling? People hardly ever are when you're doing them a favor.”

“A favor,” Jessie echoed, shaking her head. “Allie, you sicced her old boyfriend—fiancé, whatever you want to call him—on your youngest granddaughter only a few days before her wedding to someone else. You called him, you told him what he should do—I still can't believe you actually got him to buy the Harris house—and now Maddy is going to look across the hedges at Joe O'Malley's house as she walks down the garden steps to marry Matt.”

Jessie took one small step back, her words fully sinking into her own head. “You don't really think she's going to marry Matt now, do you, Allie? Why? I thought you liked him.”

“I do like him, Jessie. Everyone likes Matt Garvey. What's not to like? You like him, don't you?”

Jessie spread her hands, turned and walked away from her grandmother. “Oh, no. No, no, no. We're not going to go there, Allie.” She turned back, glared at Almira. “Are we?” she ended, the question more of a threat.

“Who? Me? Of course not, darling. I don't meddle, you know that.”

“You don't—you don't meddle? Oh, that's a riot, Allie, a real riot. Okay, what
do
you call what you've done to my poor baby sister?”

Almira twisted the two carat diamond on the third finger of her left hand, straightening it on her finger. “I call it common sense, my dear. And do you know what? If I were all plump and gray-haired and smelled like fresh-baked gingerbread, you'd just say I was being a silly, sentimental old matchmaker. Why, you'd probably think I was cute as a button. Dear old Gran. Matchmaking again. Isn't that sweet?”

She ran her hands down each side of her trim waist and hips as she stood up once more, patted her upswept hair. “Perhaps I should have let myself go to seed. I'd certainly find more sympathy from my ungrateful family.”

Jessie stared at her grandmother, her mouth slightly open as she listened to this nonsense. “You're evil, do you know that, Allie? You're positively
evil.
”

Almira smiled, patted Jessie's cheek. “Flattery will get you nowhere, darling. Now, let's go see Maddy, all right? Last thing the girl needs right now is to be abandoned by those who love her.”

“Abandoned? You threw her to the wolves,” Jessie said, chasing after Almira, who could probably outpower-walk most of the citizens of Allentown.

“Oh, don't be so dramatic, Jessie, it isn't like you. It was just one wolf,” Almira said as she headed down the wide sweep of stairs. “And I've given her a choice, that's all. You know the state
Maddy was in when she came back to us eighteen months ago. No closure, no real settlement in her mind. And don't forget the hives. You know, rather like the ones she's wearing so badly today.”

“Joseph O'Malley brought on those hives, Allie,” Jessie reasoned. “She hasn't had them since a few weeks after she came home, not until today. Now both the hives and the house are on your head. I hope you're happy.”

“Your sister's shattered
nerves
are what brought on the hives, Jessie. Try to concentrate. It's Maddy's diving into all those courses in domestic…domestic whatevers. Picking out Joe O'Malley's exact opposite for her groom. If she were completely sure she's doing the right thing, her nerves shouldn't upset her enough to have her covered in splotches, now should it? Besides, I'm not saying she's wrong, exactly, I'm just saying that she needs to see the two of them stacked up against each other. Sort of weigh them, sort out her own feelings.”

“Inspect their teeth, their bank balances?
Sleep
with both of them?” Jessie said as they walked back through the house, heading for the kitchen. “That is what you're thinking, isn't it, Allie? I know you. I've seen the books you read.”

Almira stopped dead, ten feet in front of the kitchen door, and turned to hold a finger just beneath Jessie's nose. “Now you listen to me, little girl. I read romance novels.
Love stories.
One man, one woman, true love triumphing over each and every obstacle. I do
not
read about or advocate sleeping with two men at the same time, comparing them like…like automobiles I might be taking out for
some sort of test drive. Shame on you for even thinking such a thing.”

“Yes, Allie,” Jessie said, bowing her head. “I'm sorry. I guess I must have gotten carried away. Forgive me?”

Almira pulled her taller granddaughter down and kissed her cheek. “Of course I forgive you.” Then she whispered in Jessie's ear, “Although, it
could
be interesting….”

“Allie!” Jessie exclaimed, straightening, knowing her cheeks were turning a bright, embarrassed red.

“And, my dear, if it helps you to understand what I'm doing, I have it on good authority that your sister and Matt have
never—
”

“Allie!”

Inside the kitchen, sitting on a high stool, her chin tucked into her hands, Maddy lifted her head at the sound of her sister's voice.

She'd gone straight to the family kitchen upon her return, Mrs. Ballantine right behind her, prudently shooing the cook, Mrs. Hadley, and one of the maids out of the area before leaving Maddy to her own devices.

Those devices had included a lot of slamming of pots and pans, a lot of wrenching open of cabinet doors before flinging them shut with considerable force.

And muttering. There had been a lot of muttering.

“He still loves me. Hah!” she'd grumbled, measuring flour and sugar into a stainless steel bowl.

“
I've
got a warped mind? Double hah!
He's
the one with the warped mind. Listening to Allie. Buying
my
house. Coming here with his grin and his
money and…and his
knees,
and acting as if it was no big deal.”

She'd stop mixing the brownie batter, staring off into the distance. “
Boy,
is he lucky we don't keep rat poison in the kitchen. Because I'd be
this
close to…” She'd shivered, shook her head and began abusing the brownie batter once more. “I wouldn't want to waste good food that way,” she'd told herself just before she sat down with the bowl, licking batter off the wooden spoon.

He'd looked so good. So very, very good. Just the way she remembered. Just the way he appeared in her dreams—no, her nightmares.

She'd fished a clean spoon out of the drawer, and took another whopping scoop of brownie batter.

And then another.

And another.

She could still see Joe standing outside the wedding chapel, telling her he'd blithely made the most tremendous gamble, a gamble he hadn't planned to tell her about until
after
the ceremony, the sneak.

Not that they'd even have gotten as far as the pavement outside the wedding chapel if he'd told her earlier.

He'd certainly had the opportunity. Several opportunities. They'd been together in the hotel for the entire weekend, laughing, and loving…and answering the phone whenever Loony Larry called, which he did at least three times a day.

Ample time. All the time in the world to talk to her, to ask her, one more time, if it would be all right with her if he junked his very good job, his fairly assured future and bet it all on a pipe
dream…while demanding that she live on his earnings and not touch her trust fund.

The rat. The low-down, dirty,
cowardly
rat! Hadn't he believed she'd loved him enough to stick with him through the “better or worse” if she'd known up-front?

No, of course he hadn't.

That was what really, really hurt. Had hurt her every day and night for eighteen long months.

She took another spoonful of brownie batter.

That, and knowing that she had been not in the least equipped to handle anything even remotely close to poverty. For crying out loud, she hadn't even been equipped to handle Middle Class!

She'd looked at the contents of the bowl, winced and then grabbed a clean spatula in order to spread what remained of the batter in a nine-by-eleven pan. The brownies were going to be awful. Just awful. She wasn't going to fit into her wedding gown, if she kept eating batter.

And it was all Joe O'Malley's fault. All of it. The brownies, her weight, her hives.

The rat.

The oven timer dinged now and Maddy pulled oven mitts on her hands and removed the tray of brownies as she allowed her thoughts to come to some sort of conclusion. “So now I make brownies, and can sew curtains, and even know to dust before I vacuum, not that I vacuum. Mrs. Ballantine would strangle me with the cord if I ever got within ten feet of the vacuum cleaner. And for what? So he could go and get rich and not need me anymore? The rat. The low-down, dirty—”

“Talking to herself, Jessie,” Almira stage-
whispered as the two women walked into the kitchen. “I think that's a good sign, don't you?”

“Why, because she's talking to herself, and not screaming at you?” Jessie asked, walking across the large kitchen to bend over the tray of brownies. “Sort of
short,
aren't they? I mean, they sure do smell good, but they don't look as big and fluffy as usual.”

Maddy positioned the pan more carefully on the cooling rack and turned her back on the brownies. “I ate some of the batter,” she mumbled, avoiding her sister's eyes.

“Some, Maddy? And I don't think that's very healthy. Aren't there raw eggs in brownie batter? You ought to do what I do, grab a spoon and the vanilla fudge ice cream, and go sit in the gazebo and guzzle.”

Maddy looked at her sister's taller, leaner frame. Jessie had all the elegance in the family; Jessie and Ryan both. Maddy was shorter, rounder. Definitely rounder. And if she kept eating brownie batter, soon she'd be a house.

A house.
Like the house next door. The house next door that had Joe O'Malley in it. Suddenly she was hungry all over again.

“I eat when I'm upset,” she said, glaring at her grandmother. “So sue me.”

Almira spoke up. “Yours is a petite, hourglass figure, Maddy, darling. Tiny hands and feet, slim ankles, a waist that would have done any Gibson girl proud. But it's those generous breasts and rounded hips that really attract the men. Why, you even have darling little dimples on your elbows and knees. Men like to think they're all grown up and
self-sufficient, but what they really want is a nice, soft cushion to rest their head. Ask Elizabeth Taylor, if you don't believe me.”

“Kill her for me, would you?” Maddy said to Jessie, who was, at that moment, pulling the top of her sundress away from her body enough to gaze down at her size 34B bra and sighing sadly.

“Maybe if we made a pact,” Jessie suggested. “We
both
kill her, and then we alibi each other.”

“Works for me. I'm pretty handy with a shovel now, and there's all that loose dirt I worked over at the bottom of the rose garden last week. She's small and skinny enough that it wouldn't take much to fold her up and stick her in the ground. Pity she isn't bigger, actually. She could have made great compost.”

“Such ingratitude. And to think, Jessie dear, that I haven't even shown you the breast enhancement brochure I brought home from Dr. Stephens's office last week, after we'd discussed my knee lift. All sorts of options for breasts these days, rather like a Chinese menu. Rounded, perky, upthrust, Dolly Parton. You name it. Although it is the one menu where you'd make a mistake if you took one from Column A and one from Column B. Now, out of my way.”

Almira spread out her arms, signaling for her two now bug-eyed granddaughters to part in front of her like the Red Sea, and walked between them to inspect the brownies for herself. “Oh, stop looking at me as if I had two heads. You two ought to go on the stage,” she said, then poked a finger in the center of the uncut brownies. “Smell good, Maddy. Tell me, if I let it slip that I've invited Joe to the wedding and he's accepted, do you think you could get angry
enough to bake one of those angel food cakes with the little confetti sprinkles in it? We haven't had one of those in weeks.”

Maddy walked over to the double sink, ran water in the mixing bowl. “Jessie, would you please tell our grandmother to take a flying leap off the nearest—”

“Oh, stop it, Madeline,” Allie cut in, searching in a drawer for a knife. Brownies were good. Maddy's from-scratch brownies were wonderful. But warm-from-the-oven brownies, Almira had found since her youngest granddaughter had gone domestic on them, were as near to an occasion of sin she'd been in ten long years. “I did it for the best.”