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“The hell it—”
“Bernice, are you in there?” the stick figure called over his shoulder. She was practically draped all over him, trying to see through the crack. She smelled like wet wool and strawberries.
Strawberries?
“You must be Bernie’s cousin, Annie.” The eye in the doorway shifted. The door closed a moment, then opened again minus the chain. “Honey, are you decent? Looks like we’ve got company.”
The furniture was bottom-of-the-line motel, showing both age and wear. One of Bernice’s favorite TV shows was just coming on. Annie called it World’s Tackiest Videos. On the lopsided vinyl table was an unopened bucket of fried chicken and a bottle of domestic—extremely domestic—champagne.
Dead silence persisted for all of thirty seconds, then Bernice emerged from the bathroom holding a plastic glass in each hand, and everyone started talking at once.
Harold moved to his bride’s side and laid a protective arm over her shoulder. On the other side of the bed, Annie and Tucker glared at each other.
Annie got in the first shot.
“Seduced! My father never seduced a woman in his life.”
“Now, Son, you don’t know—”
“And you tell your—your cousin for me that if she thinks I’m going to allow some brass-haired bimbo to feather her nest at my father’s expense, she can damn well think again!”
Annie gasped. “Don’t you—you can’t—”
“No? Try me.” His eyes narrowed on a deadly glint.
“Don’t tempt me,” she shot back, forgetting in a single moment the training of a lifetime. “If you think for one minute some thick-necked Neanderthal with a steroid-inflated ego is going to cast aspersions at my cousin, you can just—”
“What did you call me?”
“If the shoe fits...” She glared at his big muddy boots.
“Now, just hush up, you two. Tucker, I taught you better than that. You’ve got no call to go insulting my wife.” The older man turned to the woman at his side. “Honey, I’m ashamed to tell you, but this is my boy. He’s not a bad sort, once you get to know him, I guess we just took him by surprise. Tucker, say hello to your new mama.”
Annie could almost find it in her heart to feel sorry for the man called Tucker, who looked as if he’d swallowed a mouthful of fish bones. Second cousins were one thing. Father and son were another. She didn’t know who was trying hardest to protect whom, but it had been battle stations from the time Tucker and Annie wedged through the doorway, both determined to rescue their respective relatives.
The older man, dressed in navy blue suit pants and a white shirt, looked as dignified as any man could look wearing an earring, a gray ponytail and matching goatee.
Bernice was at her flamboyant best in a two-piece purple silk suit and fuzzy pink bedroom slippers. There was a wilted bouquet of pink roses on the bed beside a man’s coat and Bernie’s best hat, the one with the rhinestones and white fake fur.
There were tears in her cousin’s eyes. Oh, Lord, if they overflowed, so would the layers of turquoise shadow and navy-blue mascara. No bride, regardless of the circumstances, deserved to be seen with makeup streaking down her cheeks to settle into all the creases.
Annie’s shoulders drooped as the fight went clean out of her. “You’re really married, then,” she said with a resigned sigh.
Bernie beamed and nodded, her clumpy lashes glistening like sweet-gum twigs in the rain. Harold’s chest swelled. He looked from one to the other and his gaze returned to his son. “All right and tight. Had it done this morning. You can be the first to wish us luck.”
Annie looked at Tucker, who looked back at her, daring her to speak up.
“Bernie, it’s not too late,” she said. “There’s a new apartment going up near Clemmons. I thought we might drive out this weekend and look it over.”
Bernie’s lower lip trembled. She gave a little sob. Unfortunately it was the same tactic she’d tried when Annie had brought home a ten-pound sack of dry cat food instead of the salmon filet she’d requested for that damned cat.
Before things could deteriorate further, Tucker spoke up, a sickly smile on his face. “Why don’t we all go out to supper somewhere and talk this over?”
The newlyweds glanced at the bucket of chicken and the bottle of champagne on the table. Bernie looked helplessly at the two glasses she’d just retrieved from the bathroom, and Tucker followed her gaze, seeing bright orange nail polish on liver-spotted hands, a gleaming gold band on the third finger, left hand.
“Okay, so maybe we could just go somewhere where there’s more than two chairs and have ourselves a nice, quiet discussion.”
Harold cleared his throat. “Son, I don’t think you understand. This is my honeymoon. I’ve already made plans for the evening.”
Tucker opened his mouth to argue, thought better of it and shut it again. There was nothing to be gained at this point by hurting his father’s feelings and insulting the female who’d tricked him into marrying her. However, if the old bat thought for one minute that she was going to latch on to his father’s social security, his annuity and his life insurance, she could damn well think again.
“Okay, so why don’t we just sleep on it,” he said, and groaned inwardly as he heard his own words.
Annie said, “I’ll call you first thing tomorrow, Bernie.”
“But not too early.” Bernie looked at her bridegroom and winked, scattering a few flecks of mascara on her unnaturally rosy cheeks. “And, honey—fresh salmon, remember? Canned will do in a pinch if you can’t get fresh, but remember about the milk—four percent, none of that skimmed stuff.”
Tucker didn’t even try to figure that one out. He ushered the beige stick figure outside, feeling as if he’d been trapped on the twelfth floor of a ten-story building.
Without an elevator.
Two
“A thick-necked Neanderthal?” Tucker confronted Annie the minute the door closed behind them.
“Don’t take it so personally, I was upset.”
“With a steroid-inflated ego? What the devil is that supposed to mean?” Sure, he’d gone to college on a football scholarship, but he’d never taken steroids. “Lady, you don’t know the first thing about me. How would you like it if I called you a meddling old maid with all the finesse of a front-end loader?”
She blinked owlishly behind the thick lenses. Something dark and dangerous sparked inside him. “What’s the matter, don’t you recognize the description? Didn’t your mama teach you not to pick flaws in a man’s grammar?” That still rankled.
“I didn’t... Oh, shoot, I guess I did, didn’t I? I’m sorry. It’s probably an occupational hazard.”
Her shoulders drooped. Rain had soaked through in several places. She looked so forlorn he almost relented, but dammit, a man had his pride. “Yeah, well, just don’t push your luck, Annie Summers,” he growled. They had finally gotten around to introductions. “My week started out in the pits and it’s been downhill ever since.”
“Yes, well—” He watched her throat move as she swallowed hard. “That’s hardly my fault.”
“You think I give a damn whose fault it is? In case it escaped your notice, that’s my father—my father in there with that brass-haired, purple-upholstered man trap. She might think she’s got it made in the shade, but take it from me, she’s not going to get away with it.”
“Get away with what? Taking on the care and feeding of some doddering old fool for the sheer joy of nursing him through his second childhood?” She removed her glasses, the better to glare at him. It gave her a vulnerable look, that oddly naked look of people who habitually wore glasses when seen without them.
And then the words sunk in. “His second what?” Muscles clenched from his jaw all the way down to his fists.
“You heard me. You can tell him for me, it won’t do him a bit of good. Bernice doesn’t like taking care of things. I’m the one who has to take care of her cat. She even lets plants die. As for money, all she has is her social security, and he’s not going to get his hands on it.”
“You think that’s the reason he married her? For her money?” Tucker watched her open her mouth and then close it again as she picked her way through a minefield of possible answers. He gave her another dose. “Or maybe she’s smart, like you. Is that it? She’s some kind of a brain? Oh, no, I’ve got it. Pop was blinded by her beauty.” That was hitting below the belt, but dammit, if he didn’t stand up for the old man, who would?
“Bernice is—well, she’s—she has a variety of interests. For one thing, she likes music, and she’s really an attractive woman in her own way.”
“In her own way?”
“She’s, uh—colorful. Bright colors are cheerful to be around.”
His gaze moved over her damp tan raincoat, her clumsy brown shoes and the few wisps of drab brown hair that straggled out from under the wet scarf tied under her chin. He didn’t say a word, but when her defiant gaze fell away, he felt as if he’d just kicked the family pup off the front porch into the rain.
“Yes, well... evidently, your father sees something in her that you don’t.”
“Such as? Name one thing. Besides that godawful purple dress.”
She rammed the glasses back on her face, but he’d caught her out. She couldn’t hide behind them any longer. “You’re being extremely childish,” she snapped.
She had spirit, Tucker would hand her that. “Yeah, it’s part of my boyish charm,” he said with a nasty grin. They were both getting soaked to the skin, neither of them willing to back down an inch.
As he watched her struggle to come up with an annihilating retort, it occurred to him that between the two of them, Annie and her cousin Bernice had managed to punch a few buttons that hadn’t been punched in a long time. Tucker prided himself on being a even-tempered man, both at work and in his personal life. Except for a few outbursts born of sheer frustration, he’d even managed to maintain a civilized front with Shelly. He’d done it for Jay’s sake, but the truth was, picking a fight with his ex-wife had been like trying to light a wet fuse. Shelly hadn’t even cared enough to fight for their marriage. The only thing she cared about was Shelly.
“Yes, well...” She had a quiet voice, but there was nothing weak about it.
“You said that before.”
“You can give your father a message for me. My—that is, Bernie’s lawyer will be in touch tomorrow. Tell him—tell him he’d better not try to leave town.”
“Are you by any chance threatening my father?”
Long, straight nose in the air, she dived into her car, slammed the door and ground the starter a few times until the engine turned over. Torn between frustrated anger and reluctant admiration, he watched as she scratched out of the parking lot and headed south.
“Lawyer, my sweet ass,” he growled as he caught up with her and roared past, a few minutes later. He’d been taken to the cleaners by the flock of buzzards Shelly had hired to pick his bones. Damned if he was going to stand by and see the same thing happen to his father.
Annie pressed the heels of her hands against her aching eyes the next morning and wondered what the downside of retiring at age thirty-six would be, aside from a severe lack of funds. Terminal boredom, probably. After spending hours last night alternately worrying about personnel problems at school and worrying about Bernice, she’d fallen asleep just as the sky was turning gray and woken up with one of those headaches that was impervious to feverfew and even acetominophen.
Yesterday had been endless. Three teachers on maternity leave, an outbreak of head lice, plus the latest mandate to come down from Washington, to be translated from bureaucratese into something even her boss, with his limited vocabulary, could understand. And of course, there had been Bernie’s surprise elopement yesterday.
Annie had promised herself she’d try again to get in touch with Eddie and see if they couldn’t meet somewhere. Asia. Africa. The moon. As engagements went, hers was extremely unsatisfactory. Sometimes she wondered why she even bothered to hang on to the pretense.
In the beginning she’d done it because it was all she had, or was ever likely to have, but that was before Bernice. Before she’d spent one more in a long line of restless nights, trying to peel back the layers of Annie Summers in case there was something underneath it all—heaven only knew what—that would explain why a lifetime of doing the right thing had brought her to a point where she couldn’t think of a single good reason for continuing to do it.
Except for the year she’d broken her leg in two places and the year she’d come down with a bad case of food poisoning, she’d earned perfect attendance records at school and Sunday School, simply because it was expected of her.
Outstanding grades? She’d worked hard to earn them because it was expected of her. Graduated with honors from an all-girl college for the same reason. Camp counselor, scout leader—she’d done the whole bit.
“It’s up to you to give back to your community, because of who you are,” her father had drilled into her from the age of pigtails, pinafores and piano lessons. Dutifully, she had obeyed, without ever wondering until it was too late just who Annie Summers was supposed to be. She’d done, and she’d been, and she’d given the very best she could do and give and be, sacrificing—
Well, not sacrificing a whole lot, if you didn’t count not being able to stay out late or date the boy she’d been dying to date in high school. Not that he’d ever asked her, but he might have if she’d had the courage to give the right signals.
As if she’d even know how to send a signal. At the age of thirty-six, she was engaged to a political activist who was determined to go out and save the world from hunger and decadent capitalism before he came home and settled down to carve out his own slice of the pie. She hadn’t heard from him in almost six months. But then, Eddie had never been a very good correspondent.
Some love life. So where did she get off, trying to manage Bernie’s love affair? Telling her she shouldn’t run off and marry a man because he might try to take advantage of her? Maybe they were taking advantage of each other. Taking advantage of whatever time they had left for whatever mutual pleasure it provided. If she was still waiting for Eddie by the time she was Bernie’s age, she might even start looking around for a lonely widower herself.
“Get off my feet, you noisy old tomcat.” She kicked aside the covers, dislodging the cat who had taken up residence on the foot of her bed sometime during the night, purring his fool head off and scratching his various itches.
Bleary-eyed, she made it to the kitchen to put on the kettle for tea. Glancing outside, she saw that the rain had stopped, but the clouds still hung dark and heavy and sullen. “Story of my life,” she muttered to the cat, who had decided to wrap his tail around her ankles to see if he couldn’t trip her into falling headfirst into the refrigerator. Unthinkingly she reached down and scratched him behind his ears.
By focusing on the morning paper while she ate her standard breakfast of fruit, tea and whole-grain cereal, she almost managed to avoid thinking about her immediate problems. To put things into perspective, there was always Washington, China and the Middle East.
The phone waited until she was halfway through brushing her teeth to ring. She caught it on the forth ring and gargled, “Hewwo?”
“Annie? This is Bernice, are you all right?”
“Of course I’m all right, if you don’t count having to swallow a mouthful of toothpaste. Where are you? What happened? Do you need me to come get you?” Bernice’s old junker was inclined to be temperamental.
“Why would I need you to do that?”
“Well, I don’t know, I only thought—Bernie, it’s barely eight o’clock in the morning, what’s going on?”
“Well, now that you mention it, you could do me a favor if you’ve got time. You said you were going to call, didn’t you?”
Annie patted her bare foot and waited. Bernie’s demands were never straightforward. “It’s Saturday. I’ve got time. If you want to try and get the whole mess annulled, I’ll meet you wherever you say, and I promise not to ask any questions, all right?”
“I don’t want to get anything annulled. Besides, it’s too late for that. And believe me, Harold doesn’t need any of that Vigaro stuff, either.”
“Any what?”
“You know. It’s been all over the news since last year.”
“Bernie, what on earth—no, don’t tell me, I don’t even want to know.”
“Oh, for pity’s sake, I knew you’d be like this, you always are.”
“Like what?” Annie wailed, gesturing wildly with her toothbrush. “I’m not being like anything, just tell me what you called about, please!”
“You’re just waiting for a chance to say you told me so, aren’t you? You’re just like your father always was, you know that?”
It was on the tip of her tongue to deny it, but this was not the time. “Bernie, what are you calling about?” she asked with as much patience as she could muster. “Like Daddy? I’m nothing at all like Daddy. Daddy was the sweetest, kindest man alive.”
“Maybe, but he could be a real pain in the rear end.”
“So can I. What’s your point, Bernie?”
“It’s about Harold’s boy.”
“Harold’s what?”
“You met him yesterday. Tucker. He was here the same time you were, don’t you remember?”
“I remember,” Annie snapped. She remembered all too well. The memory had a lot to do with why she’d spent so many fruitless hours peeling back the layers of Annie Summers, trying to find out if there was anything worth salvaging under all those years of conditioning.
“Yes, well, Harold’s been trying to call him, but he doesn’t answer his phone, and—”
“You want me to go see if he’s all right? Bernie, have you lost your mind?”
“Oh, he’s probably all right—I mean, why wouldn’t he be? But the thing is, Harold forgot his blood pressure medicine, and he can’t remember Tucker’s mobile number, and it’s not listed, so since you don’t have to go to school, would you mind driving out to where he’s working and asking him to bring it out to the motel? Harold says it’s probably on the kitchen windowsill.”
Annie rolled her eyes. From the sun parlor came the sound of dirt being scratched onto the tile floor. “Why can’t Harold go get his own medicine?” Her jaw was tightening up again. Tension always did it to her.
“Well, because he can’t, that’s all. Do that for me, Annie, and I’ll never ask you for anything again, I promise.”
“What about your cat?”
“I’ll take him off your hands just as soon as Harold and I find a place to live.”
Annie wasn’t at all sure she wanted to get rid of her cousin, or even her cousin’s cat. Somebody in the Summers family had to take responsibility for the flakier members, and she was obviously elected. Eddie would just have to understand.
Which was how she came to be splashing through a muddy construction site, dodging ruts and panel trucks, and knocking on the door of a brown metal trailer some forty-five minutes later. Somewhat to her surprise, the sign on the door said Dennis Construction. Which Dennis? Father? Son? Both?
Not that it mattered.
When the door was flung open, she nearly tumbled down the mud-slick step. “Oh, for God’s sake, now what?” Tucker Dennis exclaimed plaintively.
“Don’t take your nasty temper out on me, I’m only here to do your father a favor.”
“Yeah, sure you are. If you can pry your cousin’s hooks out of his hip pocket, that’ll be favor enough to suit me.”
“Fine. I’ll tell your father’s wife you refuse to take him his blood pressure medicine. Do you know the name of his physician, just in case?”
“What blood pressure medicine?” He opened the door wider and muttered, “You might as well come inside.”
Annie did, but only because she wasn’t sure he wouldn’t grab her by the arm and yank her inside if she refused. He had that look about him.
The interior was no more inviting than the exterior. A stack of boxes in one corner. A dull green file cabinet, a gray metal desk, a scarred draftsman’s table and two tan metal chairs. If you didn’t count the red mud that had been tracked inside, the only bit of color to be found was in the row of hard hats that hung over a small rusty refrigerator—two white, a blue, an orange and a yellow—and a feed store calendar on the opposite wall.
“You might as well sit down.” He waved her to one of the two worn oak chairs. “I’ve got a few things to say to you.”
“The medicine.”
“In a minute.”
She took a deep breath and tried to remember the lessons of a lifetime, but nothing in all the years she’d spent among decent, civilized people had prepared her for dealing with a surly, motorcycle-riding construction worker in an ugly metal trailer out in the muddy middle of nowhere.
So she sat. Back straight, ankles crossed and hands resting one of top of the other on her lap. But no amount of outward composure could prevent the color from rising to stain her cheeks.
Tucker flexed his fingers, stiff from hours of clutching a pencil and years of working with his hands. Incipient arthritis. Wet weather didn’t help. He studied the woman seated across the desk from him, reluctantly revising his earlier opinion. She wasn’t as old as he’d thought yesterday, nor quite as plain. But her raincoat was every bit as ugly as he remembered it and so were her shoes. Nor had her disposition undergone any miraculous overnight transformation.
“So what is it you want me to do?”
“Go home and get your father’s medicine and take it to him. I suppose.”
“You suppose?”
“That’s the message I was given. You didn’t answer your home phone, and your father couldn’t remember your mobile, so Bernie called me to pass on the message.”
“Harold knows how to reach me here.”
She shrugged. “All I know is what I was told. If you’re too busy to be bothered, then I’ll call Bernie and tell her—”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake, just hang on a minute will you?”
Annie hung on. Just barely. She was cold. Her head still ached, and there was something about the man that set her teeth on edge. As a rule, she reacted to people on an intellectual level. There was nothing faintly intellectual about her reaction to Tucker Dennis. She felt like grabbing him with both hands and shaking him!
“I can turn up the heat if you’re cold.”
“Thanks, but I won’t be here long enough.”
He shrugged. “Your call. I thought I saw you shiver.”
Outside, the rain began to drum down on the metal, making it impossible to carry on a normal conversation. Annie winced as her headache reacted to the noise.
Raising his voice over the roar, Tucker yelled, “Okay, I’ll go as soon as the rain slacks off.”
“What?” She took off her glasses and pressed the heels of her hand into her eyes, and he was struck all over again by how vulnerable she looked without them.
Yeah, sure she was. Vulnerable like a baby copperhead, which was about twice as lethal as an adult specimen.
“I said—” Instead of repeating himself, he stood, moved around behind her and nudged the controls of the gas heater. She wasn’t wearing her scarf today. With her head lowered, about four inches of bare neck showed between her collar and the wad of damp brown hair knotted at the back of her head. Her skin looked as if it had never seen the sun.
“Headache?” he asked, his voice sounding gruff even to his own ears.
The impression of vulnerability disappeared along with the sliver of bare nape as she raised her head and squared her shoulders. Tucker thought of the way his father used to massage his mother’s shoulders when she had one of her tension headaches. He wondered who massaged away this woman’s pain. Or if anyone did.
And then he wondered why the hell he was wondering.