Marrying Maddy (5 page)

“The
best! Whose
best? Jessie, ask our grandmother
whose
best she did this for, will you, please? Certainly it couldn't have been
mine.
” Maddy picked up the water-filled mixing bowl and whirled to face her grandmother across the wide, chopping block table in the center of the huge kitchen. “And then tell her to duck!”

Jessie fought the impulse to hide under the table, out of the line of fire. “Now, Maddy, remember what happened the day you turned the garden hose on Ryan, and then found out it was Allie and not him who had been practicing chipping on that newly planted bit of lawn? Remember? She showed up around the corner not a minute after you'd nearly drowned Ryan, the nine iron still in her hand. You know you always regret it when you give in to your temper. Especially when you
hate
apologizing to anyone.”

“That's true enough, on all counts,” Almira said,
calmly slicing herself a two-inch square wedge of warm brownie and placing it on a piece of antique Beleek china she'd retrieved from the overhead, glass-doored cupboard. “And, as Mrs. Hadley would have your head if you messed up her kitchen, you probably should rethink weapons, at the very least.”

Maddy put down the bowl and pressed both hands to her head. “Insane. I'm going insane. I'm surprised I've held on to my sanity this long.”

“Hello? Anybody home? Maddy?”

Maddy's head jerked up at the sound of Matthew Garvey's voice. “Oh, God, no. Not now, not now.”

“I'll head him off at the pass, give you some time to collect your thoughts,” Jessie offered. “And to wash that smear of chocolate off your cheek. And, hey, at least the hives are gone. There is that, right?”

But it was too late. Mrs. Ballantine, who would probably swear on a stack of bibles that she hadn't directed Matt to the kitchens, was probably in the main drawing room right now, doing her best to giggle into her sleeve—not that anyone had ever actually
seen
the woman laugh.

Matthew strode into the kitchen, his white dress shirt open at the neck, his tie missing, looking like a man who had left work early and didn't feel the least bit guilty about playing hooky.

“Ah, here you are, all my favorite ladies in the same place. And do I smell freshly baked brownies?” he asked, walking across the kitchen in his long-legged style to plant a kiss on Maddy's cheek. “Yes, definitely brownies. And they taste good, too.”

Matthew Garvey had been a part of the Chandler household for the past three years, ever since Ryan had brought his new friend home after a game of golf at the local country club.

And Matt was definitely the country club, golf slacks and knit shirt kind of guy. The kind of guy who always looked at home in his clothes, whether in the boardroom or on the golf course. He was, Maddy always thought, so “together,” so wonderfully self-assured. And so very, very safe.

Tall, leanly handsome, well-tanned. Hair as black as coal, contrasting well with his bright blue eyes. A social pedigree as long as his long legs. And nice. Matthew Garvey was nice; one of the good guys.

And very safe.

Matt was the scion of Richard Garvey, founder of the local, privately held Garvey Bank, and he hadn't been handed a single favor by that father. He'd gotten his degree, started at the bank as a teller, and worked his way up over the past ten years. Now, with his father in semiretirement, he was president of the bank at the age of thirty-six.

Handsome indeed, and handsome was as handsome did, so the saying went. He was not at all volatile. He was, instead, gentlemanly. Old enough to want children, gracious enough to be willing to wait until after the wedding to make demands on Maddy and sane enough to know that mad, passionate love usually doesn't last.

All in all, the perfect arrangement.

All in all, the perfect groom.

All in all…safe.

“Hello, Matt,” Almira said as Maddy quickly reached for a paper towel and ran it under the water
before scrubbing at the splotch of batter on her cheek. “Did you see the moving trucks next door as you drove up?”

Maddy wondered how much pressure clenched teeth could take before they cracked. “Not now, Allie,” she warned from between those clenched teeth, even as she smiled and slid her hand through the crook of Matt's elbow. “You've just
got
to come see what Great-Aunt Harriet sent us, Matt. Come on, I'll show you, and maybe you can help me figure out where we can hide it.”

He resisted her attempt to drag him out of the kitchen. “Just a minute, Maddy, okay? No, Almira, I didn't notice the moving van. So, knowing you, I suppose you already know the new owner's name, vital statistics and whether or not they own a grand piano?”

“Oh, God, here we go,” Maddy all but groaned, looking to her sister for help.

Jessie, knowing how her grandmother could string out a story for best effect, and how Maddy would react, quickly stepped in. “It's not a they, Matt, it's a him. One owner. His name is Joseph O'Malley. I believe he's from the Philadelphia area. He does something with computers, or software, or something like that.”

There. She'd gotten it all out, quick and clean. All except for the fact that eighteen months ago, Maddy had been about to marry that same Joseph O'Malley. But that could wait, right?

“O'Malley?” Matt frowned, repeating the name. “O'Malley. Sofware.” Then he looked straight at Almira. “Could that be J. P. O'Malley, the software genius? No, of course not.”

Almira tried to make hers an innocent question, and succeeded in fooling one out of three of her listeners. “Why of course not, Matt? He wouldn't be the first Philadelphia businessman to have purchased a summer home here in Allentown. I see nothing out of the usual in it.”

“Summer home, Allie?” Maddy felt as if she were strangling—or maybe she just wanted to strangle her grandmother. “You can't possibly call the Harris house a summer home. It has seven bedrooms, for crying out loud!”

“All the better to entertain, my dear,” Almira countered, much like the Big Bad Wolf as he flashed his teeth at Little Red Riding Hood. “And, yes, Matt. It definitely is J. P. O'Malley. But he's already asked me to call him Joe. Such a nice, polite young man.”

“That's it, I'm outta here,” Maddy said, flinging the balled-up paper towel in the general direction of the garbage can and heading for the hallway.

“Be with you in a minute, Maddy,” Matt called after her, wondering what was bothering her, as she was clearly upset. Probably she didn't want to talk about J. P. O'Malley because he'd bought the Harris house out from under them. That was understandable. “And, hey, Maddy, didn't O'Malley graduate from Penn like you? He's called a boy genius, so he probably isn't more than two or three years older than you. Did you ever meet him?”

Maddy stopped at the swinging door that led from the kitchen, her shoulders hunched defensively, her back still turned to Matt. “I may have, once or twice,” she lied, wondering, just for an instant, why she was lying to the man.

Then she remembered why she'd lied, why she'd never told Matt about Joe, not when she'd first come home, not when they'd begun to date, not even after he'd slipped the diamond circlet on her left hand.

She hadn't told him
because it still hurt.
It still hurt way down deep inside of her. Joe, and the memory of him, were still open wounds, just barely beginning to scab over, and still far from healed. Talking about Joe, with Jessie, with Allie, with her own doctor, with
anybody,
was still just too painful.

“You're staying for dinner, aren't you, Matt?” she asked, daring to turn around, daring her betraying tears not to fall. “I'll just go up to my kitchen and get the leg of lamb out of the fridge.” Maybe take another antihistamine, as her upper lip was beginning to tingle ominously again.

When she had gone, Matt accepted a plate holding a wedge of brownie from Almira. “I knew losing the house upset Maddy, but I guess I didn't realize just how much she'd wanted it. She said she'd be perfectly happy living here for a while longer, while we looked for another house,” he said, looking at Jessie.

“Bridal nerves,” Jessie lied quickly, feeling very protective of her sister, protective of Matt as well. “This morning I found her crying over the favors for the guests that had just been delivered, telling me they were just too pretty for words. She'll be fine.”

“She'll be ducky,” Almira agreed, patting Matt's cheek as she headed out of the kitchen. “Just ducky. Everything will be perfect, I promise.”

J
oe lay back on the brand-new, soft chaise longue beside his brand-new pool, his legs crossed at the ankles, his hands behind his head. It was nine o'clock in the morning, and the sun was shining, he'd already had breakfast, Maddy was next door—hating his guts—and life was good.

Hopefully, soon to get better.

He'd been in residence for less than twenty-four hours, and already he felt very much at home.

He'd gone out for dinner the previous evening, as the limited staff he'd hired hadn't yet arrived, and slept in his king-size bed after locating a set of deep green sheets from the bottom of one of the packing boxes.

This morning, after drinking orange juice direct from the container, he'd gone on a hunt for a pair of swimming trunks, then gone out to the pool to swim a dozen laps.

Now here he was, lazing in the sun, beads of wa
ter still clinging to him, a pair of designer sunglasses shading his eyes and, in general, feeling pretty damn smug.

He could really get used to this. Life in the countryside, with birds chirping in the trees, flowers all around. So very different from the small Philadelphia row house he'd grown up in, light years away from his Philly condo that had all the bells and whistles, but not a single chirping bird outside his bedroom window.

Pigeons, he'd decided, didn't count.

Such a long trip, all the way from South Philly to the classiest Allentown suburbs. His dad, who had taken a hike when he was two and never contacted him again until after the
Newsweek
cover—to hit him up for a loan—would never see this part of Joe's life.

His mother, who had died so suddenly three days after his nineteenth birthday, never could, even though Joe wished her here with all his heart.

He'd worked for his mother, worked every day. In school. In odd jobs. Soaking up knowledge like a sponge, because his mother promised him that knowledge was his way out, his way “up.” And he'd earned his way. He'd unloaded fruit and vegetable trucks at Sal's Grocery, delivered newspapers every morning. He had even run numbers for Jimmy Jumbo Ears Moscotti for about two weeks, until his mother had found out.

Fifteen, and big for his age, his petite mother had jumped into the air in order to slap his face, tell him she hadn't been scrubbing other people's toilets for twenty years so that her only child could go flush
himself down one of them. His mother had always had a way with words….

So he'd returned to his studies with a new determination; graduated top of his class of six hundred, earned a full scholarship to the University of Pennsylvania. His mother had lived to see his name on the dean's list, but not to see him graduate.

What a life. What mixed memories.

And now this.

He'd learned a lot in his twenty-seven years, most of it from his mother, plenty of it from his teachers and the rest from the gritty streets of South Philly. But he'd never quite gotten over the stigma of being poor in a world that values material wealth.

So now he had it. All the money his hard work could bring him. More money than he'd expected or knew what to do with, truthfully. Enough money to tell himself that he was just as good as anyone else, maybe even better than some, and that, damn it, he deserved some happiness in his personal life.

Except that happiness still eluded him, had left him standing on the Strip in Vegas with fifty bucks in his pocket; had made him feel, yet again, what it was like to be the poor boy from South Philly, the guy with more dreams than brains. The guy with only a shadowy vision of a better future, and still struggling with his absent father's legacy of failure.

Joe had told himself over and over, all through the years, that he was his mother's son, not his father's image. He'd told himself that until he'd actually begun to believe it.

He'd told himself that even as he'd gone back to the hotel room to find Maddy's suitcases gone.

And then, mad at Maddy, mad at his dad, mad at the world, he'd gone off to prove it.

The sharp spray of cold water hit his chest and face. “What in
hell…?
” He pulled off his sunglasses, squinted up at the tall form standing over him.

“It's a warm morning. I thought you could use some cooling off.”

Joe rubbed a hand across his drenched face, sluicing off water, and blinked several times. Felt the quick anger invade him, just as quickly tamped it down. He knew this wasn't going to be easy. Nothing in his life had been easy. “Let me take a wild shot at this one. You'd be the fiancé?”

“Wrong. I'd be the brother,” the sun-shadowed image corrected, redirecting the hose nozzle before turning off the spray. “And you'd be the louse, right?”

“News travels fast around here,” Joe said, standing up to wipe his hands on the towel he'd snatched from a nearby table. He held out his right hand. “Joe O'Malley, louse, at your service. Pleased to meet you, Ryan Chandler. And thanks for only pelting me with water, and not beating me with the hose while you were at it. I'd expected a punch in the mouth, to tell you the truth. Maddy always told me you were a very protective older brother.”

“That wasn't for Maddy,” Ryan said, ignoring Joe's hand. “That was for me. You've already screwed up Maddy's life once. Now you seem to be back, trying to do it again, God only knows why. I suppose it wouldn't help if I were to ask you to go away, leave my sister alone? I could threaten to beat you black and blue, too, if you really want me to.
Only I'd have to make it all gut shots. If Maddy saw you with a black eye, she'd probably feel sorry for you.”

Joe withdrew his hand, pretended to wipe something from his chest. He looked at Ryan Chandler, man of the house, head of the business, and one tall, muscular-looking son of a gun. Hair as black as Maddy's, eyes just as green. Now that the sun wasn't half-blinding him, even with Chandler's longer face, squarer jaw, Joe would have been able to pick Maddy's protective big brother out of a crowd.

He shook his head. “Sorry, no. It wouldn't help if you flattened me. I'd still stick around. But my gut most gratefully thanks you. I'm here to stay, Mr. Chandler, or at least for the duration—until after the wedding. If there is a wedding. It's just another of my wild, reckless gambles, as Maddy would tell you.”

Ryan lifted one expressive eyebrow. “Really. You're betting over a million dollars that Maddy would take one look at you and toss Matt into the nearest garbage can? That's one damn healthy ego you've got, O'Malley.”

“Yeah,” Joe said, smiling his best
I'm a nasty little rascal, but please love me anyway
smile. It had always worked to get a free doughnut out of Mrs. George at the South Street Bakery, but he didn't have much hope that it would help him now. “Sometimes I have to beat this ego of mine down with a stick. And you're underestimating the bargaining power of the Harris Realtor. By about a million. But it will be worth it, every penny, if I can
stop Maddy from making the second biggest mistake in her life.”

Joe watched as a small tic began in Ryan Chandler's tanned left cheek. “I take it all back, O'Malley. You don't have a big ego. You're
all
ego, top to bottom. Do you really think Maddy's going to go all soft and gooey because you bought this house? You do, don't you?”

“I just want a chance, that's all. A chance to prove to Maddy that I love her, that I still want to marry her. If I can't convince her, this house will be her wedding present. I owe her that much. Twice as much, and more. I doubt I'd be the success I am today if I hadn't been trying so hard to prove her wrong about me.”

The eyebrow lifted again, and Joe thought he saw a quick flash of sympathy in Ryan Chandler's eyes. “That's pretty pathetic, you know.”

Joe grinned quite naturally, relaxing his guard now that he knew he wasn't going to get punched. “Damn straight, Ryan, if we can be informal? I'm pathetic, more than pathetic. Desperate is probably an even better word. When Almira got hold of me a month ago, said this was the way to go, I took it, even if, between you and me, it sounded nuts. But I've got to say that it sure got Maddy over here in a hurry. She can hardly ignore me, not when I'm living next door.”

Ryan took the towel from Joe, gave a few quick swipes across the seat of a nearby chair in case it had caught some of the splash, and sat down. He was wearing a suit and tie, as he'd been on his way to the plant when his feet had somehow taken a right
turn, leading him to the old Harris house. Now the O'Malley house.

“You really love her?” he asked, looking straight at Joe, trying to look straight through him to his motives. “Or do you just hate losing?”

Joe grimaced as he sat down as well. “I'm not a good loser, I'll grant you that. But if I thought Maddy was happy with this Matthew Garvey guy, I'd back off. Almira doesn't seem to think so. She convinced me—that wasn't hard—and, well, here I am.”

“Yes, my grandmother. That's the second time you've mentioned her. Maddy isn't speaking to her, not that I blame her. But we did have the greatest leg of lamb and all the trimmings last night, so it's not that bad. Cook never could get the hang of leg of lamb. Always tastes like mutton when she does it.”

Joe hadn't understood half of what Ryan Chandler had just said. “Almira, your grandmother…she cooks?”

Ryan slapped his palms against his knees, and stood up. “Allie cooks, all right. She cooks up plots to drive the rest of us insane. But Maddy
really
cooks. When she's happy, when she's sad, when she's mad as hell…she cooks. It would be easier to break your nose for you this morning if I hadn't eaten so well last night.”

“Maddy cooks?” This didn't compute for Joe, who could visualize Maddy in a lot of places. The kitchen wasn't one of them. “Are we talking about the same Maddy here?”

Ryan looked down at the man who had broken his baby sister's heart. He really wanted to hate the
guy, but he could see how Maddy had fallen in love with him. He was just the sort to intrigue her: handsome, fairly witty—which couldn't have been easy this morning—and with that almost tangible air of adventure about him.

Like a pirate of old, Ryan thought, or some such nonsense, just the sort of exciting creature his sister would fall for, want to mother. And definitely a self-made man, a guy who had come up the hard way, determinedly climbing the ladder to success one difficult rung at a time.

Ryan envied Joe O'Malley that. He'd been handed everything on a silver platter the day he'd been born, and still, at the age of thirty-two, didn't know how to say, “No, thank you,” and get out. He wanted to ask O'Malley what it was like to see your dream and go after it.

“You got rich, Maddy went domestic,” Ryan admitted now, knowing he was giving Maddy's secrets away. “Domestic, and frugal, and pretty much the perfect hausfrau, if I'd dare to call her that, and I won't. She's even gotten Cook to start clipping coupons before going to the grocery store. Seems you've both made a lot of changes in your lives in eighteen short months. I wonder why…and just who all the changing was for. You might want to think about that, O'Malley. You and Maddy both. See you around.”

“Yeah, right,” Joe mumbled, Ryan's words echoing in his ears. Knotting in his stomach. Making him doubt himself for the first time in a long time. Kind of like his mom's slap to the cheek all those years ago.

Joe watched Ryan retrace his steps along the
poolside, then let himself out of the six-foot-high cedar fence. He might have said goodbye, but Joe couldn't be sure.

He rubbed a hand across his mouth, shook his head a time or two, then lay back against the chaise.

He'd gotten as rich as he could, worked as hard as he could, so that he could come to Maddy not only as her financial equal, but richer, more successful than the Chandler family.

While she was learning how to be the wife of a struggling dreamer.

“God, what idiots we are,” he said, standing up and diving into the pool to cool his heated mind…the mind that had so meanly pointed out that Maddy had gone one step further. She was engaged to be married….

 

“Ryan's leaving,” Jessie said, exhaling in genuine relief. “And he didn't hit him.”

“Pity,” Almira said as Jessie allowed the curtain to fall back into place. “I'd give Harriet's tea caddy to see Ryan get ruffled, take a poke at someone. Boy's entirely too controlled, you know, like his father. If he can't loosen up a little bit, have some fun, the least he could do is punch someone's lights out.”

Jessie eyed her grandmother warily. “So, if I can follow your corkscrewed logic at all, you'll be setting up a match for Ryan and the heavyweight champ next month?” she asked, retreating from the attic window, the best vantage point for seeing into O'Malley's enclosed pool area.

Jessie felt like a fool, eavesdropping on their new neighbor, but Allie shouldn't be left alone when she
was in one of her meddling moods. It was too dangerous, for all of them. “I'll have to remember to buy him a jump rope and some iodine.”

“Oh, I'm much more subtle than that, Jessie,” Almira said as they made their way back to the third floor. She stopped in the square foyer just outside the double doors that led to Maddy's apartment. “Except when dealing with Maddy, of course. She never gets the point of subtle. Her I knock over the head, just to get her attention.”

“Well, congratulations, Allie, I think you've gotten it,” Jessie told her, drawing her grandmother away from the double doors, doors that she was eyeing much too speculatively to suit Jessie. “Come on, it's time you left for your appointment with Francis. Your gray roots will be showing up any day now, you know.”

Almira quickly lifted a hand to her hair, withdrew it just as rapidly. “You're only saying that so you can go off to the plant without worrying about what I'm going to do next. But, believe me, I'm out of it now. I set it up. It's up to Maddy and Joe to take it from here. That's the difference between setting up probabilities and meddling, dear.”