The Angel Tasted Temptation (3 page)

Now that was one thing Meredith
had
done. Who knew what kind of diseases lurked in public restrooms? "Yes, every time."

Her mother let out a long breath of relief. "Good. I'm just concerned about you, dear. That's all. This isn't like you."

For a moment, Meredith felt a twinge of regret for leaving like she had. For letting everyone down. She heard the concern in her mother's voice and knew that even though Momma was a germophobe to rival Mr. Clean, she handed out those Clorox Wipes with love.

"I'm fine, Momma," Meredith repeated.

"Have you stopped by to say hello to your Aunt Gloria yet?" Momma asked, referring to her sister, Rebecca's mother. "Maybe she can talk some sense into you. I just can't understand why you took off like a bat out of you-know-where."

"I don't want to talk about that right now."

Momma sighed. "Meredith, you can't just up and leave your responsibilities like that."

"I just got to Rebecca's. I want to say hello and unpack and—"

"Dear," her mother said, her voice lowering again, out of teapot range, "is her house clean?"

Her mother's perennial question. To her, someone with a dirty house or untidy kitchen ranked in the same category as a potbellied pig with diarrhea. She didn't want either in her house, spreading what she called an air of disorder in her pristine environment

Cleanliness was, of course, the best way to equate oneself with godliness. To her mother, those who couldn't find the time or energy to de-germ their homes weren't worth a broken cookie at the church bake sale.

Meredith glanced around her. In her mother's eyes, Rebecca's disarray would be an offense against humanity, though Meredith didn't see anything potentially lethal in the room. Piles of preschooler toys grouped into colorful mini-mountains of leftover play around the room. A blanket lay haphazardly across the sofa, trailing onto the floor. And at her feet, a big, fat snoring beagle who smelled like mothballs.

"Yep, clean as a whistle."

"You make sure and watch how often she washes her hands and—"

"I know, Momma. I have to go. I love you."

Her mother let out a sound of discontent at having her hygiene lecture interrupted, then she softened. "I love you too, dear. Be safe. And remember, Indiana girls are good girls."

Meredith ignored the flickers of doubt in her gut, said good-bye to her mother, then flipped the phone shut and stuffed it back into her purse. She was half tempted to turn it off, lest her mother call again, but had a sudden image of the cops surrounding Rebecca's house on good Shordon authority that only a hostage situation would prevent Meredith from answering.

Meredith turned to Rebecca, who had ensconced herself in the opposite armchair. Rebecca's second pregnancy, now nearing the end at thirty-six weeks, was well pronounced, like the baby was determined to introduce himself or herself into every conversation. Rebecca wore her shoulder-length, straight brown hair back in a clip that she said kept it out of her eyes— and out of reach of the hairstylist-to-be fingers of her four-year-old daughter, Emily. Rebecca was a beautiful woman, one of the few in the family who hadn't been cursed with the Shordon mini-chest or the mega-nose.

"Sorry," Meredith said. "When my mother calls—"

"I know," Rebecca said, laughing. "It's like a primal urge to let our mothers keep having input in our lives, even when we're long past the legal drinking age."

"It's masochistic.''

Rebecca laughed. "At least your mother is a thousand miles away. Mine lives next door. One of these days, I swear Jeremy and I are going to have enough money to afford a house of our own."

Rebecca lived in a small Cape-style house owned by her parents, Aunt Gloria and Uncle Mike, bought years before as rental property after Uncle Mike had transferred up to Massachusetts with a promotion from American Airlines. The houses sat a few streets down from the Charles River, close enough to catch the scent of the fresh water and a glimpse of the boaters.

Their investment had paid for itself quickly in the desirable Cambridge area, so when Rebecca got married—and pregnant in quick succession—they'd rented the second house out to their only child.

“I’m sure it won't be much longer before you've got a mortgage of your own to complain about,'' Meredith said with a smile.

"If Jeremy ever decides he's got enough education it won't. Now he's signing up for his doctorate. At MIT, which will cost us a fortune." Rebecca reached for a basket of clean laundry and began folding the little pastel T-shirts and pants inside. "I swear, I'm going to go crazy living here."

"It makes finding a babysitter easier, though."

"I'd prefer a sitter who kept her opinions about my housekeeping to herself."

Meredith laughed. "Sounds like those tendencies run in the family, at least between those two sisters." She thought of Aunt Gloria, whose house was as chaotic as Martha's was pristine. Despite being on opposing cleanliness spectrums, the two sisters shared one common trait—they were both darn good Buttinskis.

Rebecca chuckled. "Want some wine? I'll live vicariously through you. I haven't had a glass in so long, I wonder if
I'm
fermenting. Being pregnant has put a serious kink in my social life."

"At least you have one. My idea of Friday night fun is getting off early from Petey's Pizza Parlor and waiting for Hester to lay a new egg in Grandpa's chicken coop."

"I remember how bad it was in Indiana when I was a kid. God, I don't miss that place at all."

Rebecca started to get to her feet, but Meredith waved her back down. "You sit. I'll get it. You're on bedrest, remember?"

"Ah, it is nice to be spoiled." A smile spread across her cousin's face. "Sure I can't talk you into moving in permanently?"

"Hey, I'm easily bribed." Meredith crossed to the kitchen to get the wine. While her cousin rested on the couch and gave directions, Meredith opened a bottle of zinfandel for herself and poured Rebecca a glass of ice water. It was after ten and the house was silent, with Emily asleep and Jeremy off with his study group, boning up on engineering principles.

"Labor pains okay?" Meredith asked from the kitchen.

"Much better now that I can't do anything but sit around the house. I'll be glad when this baby comes and I can move again.

"Speaking of painful stuff... How's Caleb?" Rebecca asked, when Meredith returned to the living room with the drinks. Her cousin patted an empty spot on the sofa beside her.

Guilt pricked at her. There was another thing she'd abandoned—her former fiancé. Caleb hadn't taken the ending of their relationship well at all.

Good thing he'd had that paper bag in the glove compartment of the hearse. That, and a trip to DQ for a soft-serve chocolate cone, had taken the edge off the words "It's over."

"He's okay," Meredith said, taking the proffered seat. "Still thinking we'll get back together, though. But we won't. Besides, I think I'm allergic to the smell of formaldehyde. Every time I was with him, I felt ill."

Rebecca laughed. "I'm sure you'll meet someone different from Caleb, especially here. Not too many embalmers hang out in the local bars."

"I want more than different. I want a guy who ... well, who knows what he's doing." Meredith arched a brow of hint. "With
everything
."

Rebecca looked at Meredith. She blinked twice. "That is totally not you. At least not the Meredith I remember from the summers at Grandpa's lake cottage."

"I know. It's the most insane thing I've ever wanted to do in my life."

Rebecca gestured at her with the water glass, the ice cubes clinking like quiet music. "Why didn't you do all this wild oat sowing back in Indiana?"

"You lived there when you were a kid. You remember what it was like. Everyone knows everyone in Heavendale. If I bought two percent instead of whole milk, the neighbors would tell my mother before I could get home." She shook her head. "Can you imagine what doing something like this would generate?"

Rebecca laughed. "A gossip tornado."

"Exactly." That was something Meredith couldn't afford, not back home. Everything that happened in Boston had to stay in Boston. If word leaked back to the Heavendale papers, she'd ruin much more than just her own reputation.

And that was a price she couldn't afford to pay.

A smile crossed Rebecca's lips. She moved forward and drew her cousin into a hug. "I hope you know what you're doing."

"I do," Meredith said. "Sort of."

"You're playing with lit matches."

"That's what I'm hoping."

Rebecca drew back and gave a simple shrug that said she was going to support her cousin, no matter what. "Well, if you're sure you want to toy with fire, I can tell you
exactly
where to go to find some really cute kindling."

Kenny's Everything's-Better-With-a-Beer Fish

1 pound fish (haddock, cod, whatever you want)

1/2 cup flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

Pepper

1 bottle beer (definitely stale—don't waste a perfectly good beer on this!)

Vegetable oil

One warning: don't try to mix
drinking
beer with
frying
beer at the same time. I once had a hell of an accident doing that and ... Well, let's just say my performance was a little subpar for a while. So stay sober for now, then chug-a-lug when you're done.

Heat 1-2 inches of oil in a heavy saucepan until it reaches 350 degrees. Or if you're like me and wouldn't know a freakin' candy thermometer if your doctor brought it out at the annual physical, just improvise. The oil's ready when it sizzles like hell if you drop some batter in there. Easy, right?

In a pie plate (see Ma, I did pay attention to something other than the girls in home ec) mix the flour, salt and pepper. Add in the beer—from half the bottle to all of it, depending on how thick you want your batter to be. Dip the fish into the batter, then put the filets into the oil.

Yeah, that was hard, wasn't it? Feeling worn out? Grab a cold brewski. Don't worry, you got time. The fish will take five minutes on each side to get golden brown. You could down at least two in that time. Maybe three, if you work fast.

Drain the fish on some paper towels if you want to pretend you care what you're doing to your arteries, then eat.

Beer in your bottle and beer in your food. It doesn't get much better than that, my friend.

"I told you, Kenny, I'm not going in there."

"Yeah, yeah. But you were hungover when you said it."

"I'm serious. I'm done drinking. I'm done with women for at least a month."

Kenny drew in a sharp breath. "Be careful what you say out loud, buddy. It's bachelor blasphemy."

Travis paused on the bottom step and gripped the wrought iron railing. It was Sunday night and they'd just left the gym after a particularly humiliating game of racquetball, made worse by the purse-sized bump on Travis's head that kept aching, like a reminder of past sins. To be standing here, outside Slim Pickin's bar, was the height of stupidity, considering his resolve that morning. But like an addict seeking that regular high, Travis had followed Kenny here.

Every Sunday, they came to Slim Pickin's. Monday was Mortie's Place. Tuesday, another bar, Wednesday sometimes another visit to Slim Pickin's, then a fourth on Thursday, until the weekend came and Brian or Lou or someone else would chip in for a case and fire up his grill. As regular as clockwork, as if he were standing on the assembly line for early liver disease.

Travis turned to Kenny. "Don't you think it's time we grew up?"

Kenny blinked. "Uh ... why?"

"Because we're in our late twenties; thirty is just around the corner, and we're still acting like we scored a fake ID and a case of Coors."

"And your problem with that is ... what?"

"I have a job. I can't be doing this every night."

Kenny climbed back down the two steps and laid a hand on Travis's arm. "Travis, you and I convince people to buy
beverages
for a living. That's not a job. It's like being Gopher on
Love Boat
."

"Exactly. And why do you think I haven't been promoted? Or tried really hard to get a new job? You know how I hate working for Larry."

Kenny shrugged. "Because you figured out a cake-walk job with a decent salary is the smartest thing you ever fell into?"

"No. Because I come in bleary-eyed and with a headache more often than not. This isn't the life I planned on, Kenny."

His friend turned his head right, then left, peering down the empty sidewalk. "Well, I don't know whose life you think you've got, pal, because you're the only Travis Campbell I see in front of me."

"That I don't know." Travis let out a sigh and ran a hand through his hair. "But I intend to find out."

"Dude, you're not making any sense. First you want to quit drinking. Then you start talking crazy about giving up women. Now you don't even know who you are? Have you been hit on the head recently by falling debris? We can sue for that you know."

"No, I haven't. I was, however, hit by a hell of a purse."

"Oh yeah. I forgot about that. Maybe it knocked a few brain cells loose." Kenny draped an arm over Travis's shoulder and tugged him up the last step and into the entrance. "And I have the perfect solution for lost brain cells."

"What?"

"Why lose some more, of course. It's what beer does best."

Meredith sat on a corner stool at Slim Pickin's, an untouched margarita on the rocks before her, and drew in a breath. This was a crazy plan. The kind they put on women-in-jeopardy movies. "She should have known better," the announcer would say as the opening credits rolled, "than to go looking for trouble."

That was precisely what Meredith wanted, though. Trouble—and lots of it—before she had to return to Indiana. She knew it wouldn't be long before someone came looking for her. She had to hurry up and make this change happen.

If anyone tried anything, she had the box of Trojans in one pocket of her purse—best case scenario—and a small bottle of pepper spray in another pocket—Lifetime movie special scenario.