With Every Breath (48 page)

Maddie killed the fifteen minutes by going to the market. She ran into Mildred Diehl and smiled at her.

The woman harrumphed.

When they got home, Maddie made turkey burgers. Joe watched the process over her shoulder with a jaundiced eye.

"You’ve got to be kidding," he muttered. "Turkey? That’s un-American."

"It's health-conscious. And I’ve been slack on my rules long enough. It’s time to restore some sense of order around here," she answered.

He thought of pointing out that "around here" was his house and as such he ought to have beef if he wanted it. But the fact that she was there, still there, was too goddamned good for him to feel like quibbling over the fine points.

Still, there was the principle of the thing, and he didn’t want to start a precedent with this turkey business.

"Real men don’t eat turkey burgers," he argued after a moment. "Ex-jocks don’t eat turkey burgers."

Maddie ignored him until she had rummaged in the cupboards and realized that he didn’t have a frying pan.

"I don’t believe this." She looked at him, astounded. "What do you cook with?"

"I hardly ever do. Guess we’ll just have to go to the diner." He moved away from the counter and yawned. "Regina makes great hamburgers. Or maybe we could shoot over to the Sandbar. Pizza and beer and sleep doesn’t sound half-bad either. Or we could order in again."

"Sleep?" Maddie lifted a brow. "And here I was planning on testing out that lung of yours when you’re breathing hard."

"Yeah, well, we could do that, too," he said quickly. He caught her in his arms, swinging her around to face him. He felt fine. He felt really damned fine. All his decisions were made, met, and neatly organized.

He hooked his hands behind her back, and realized how amazingly easy it was to say the words aloud after all.

"I love you. I want you to stay here. I don’t want you to find another house to rent. Stay."

Her smiled faded. Her heart roared. She stared at him.

For a moment, an endless moment, he knew fear again. There was raw, unadulterated panic, scurrying and clawing and wild. He felt his face tighten.

"Say something, goddamnit," he snapped.

"Watch your language."

Watch your language? He was dying. "Say something else."

"I already put the house up for sale in Fort Lauderdale."

His heart thumped. "Okay," he said slowly. "Okay, that’s good."

"I called the realtor. She’s sending the papers for me to sign. And I called a moving company. They’re going to pack the place up and ship everything here."

"Okay," he said again.

"I told Harry I didn’t want to go anywhere. I wanted to stay with you."

"Better." He was starting to be able to breathe again. "I love
you," she burst out.

His heart moved hard, incredibly. Good, oh, it was so good to hear that. But there was a great big hesitation at the end of her voice.

"But?" he asked warily. His heart slowed down again as he waited for her to go on.

"What are we, Joe?" she burst out.

"Huh?"

"All your theories. Where do we fit in?"

"The real thing," he answered without hesitation. "Got to be. Your pacing drives me nuts, and I don’t like your health-conscious food, so that sort of rules out the ‘grew-to-love-her’ crap." He eased back from her and rubbed his jaw. "I didn’t even want you right away, which kind of nips the sexual attraction thing in the bud, too."

Her heart skipped. "You didn’t?"

Wildflowers. "Not much."

"What about the one-two punch?"

"Nah. It’s been more like one-two-three-four-five, flattening me every time I try to get back to my feet again."

Maddie grinned slowly. Then she bit her lip.

"Josh and I can’t keep staying here, though, Joe."

His eyes narrowed. "Why not? What am I missing here?"

"Morals. Right from wrong. I can’t just keep"—she thought briefly that Mildred had a good way of putting it after all
—
"carrying on
with you right under Josh’s nose. And you can’t keep on sleeping on top of the covers."

"No. The jeans are getting old."

"So," she said, and she let out her breath carefully. "I want to stay, I do. Oh, God, I do." She looked him in

the eye. "Everything good in the whole world is right here in this house, right now. And I believe in it. I believe in you. I don’t think this can get twisted, dangerous, hurtful. You’re too ... good."

"Goddamn it," he muttered. He grabbed her arm, pulling her.

"What are you doing? And watch your language." "It’s a goddamned technicality. You took years off my life with a goddamned technicality. Where’s Josh?" "On the deck."

"No, he’s not."

They stopped at the doors and looked out. The deck was bare. A box of chocolate chip cookies lay out there on its side, its opened edges fluttering in the wind.

The terror came back, but it was brief this time.

The paranoia was fading more and more every day, Maddie realized. No one had taken Josh. No one had stolen him. He had just... wandered off, as boys would.

Maddie turned away from the deck and called up the stairs. "Josh, you'd best be watching PBS! Rules," she muttered, stomping up the stairs. "I always had rules."

Joe followed her. "Yeah, well, you can’t blame him for the cookies. Hell, you were going to make him eat a turkey burger."

They found him in Joe’s bedroom watching the television set. It was tuned to PBS, but the edge of the remote peeked out from beneath his right sneaker.

A normal kid, she thought, and fought the urge to cry with the sweetness of it.

"Hey, Josh," Joe said.

Josh took his eyes off the television briefly, reluctantly. "I’m going to marry your mom," Joe went on. "That okay with you?"

Josh smiled slowly, then he nodded.

"O-k-k-kay."