“Could we turn the radio down for a sec?” Lacey asked her. “I wanted to talk to you about helping around the house.”
Mackenzie didn’t touch the volume button. “What do you mean?” She sounded suspicious.
“I mean that we all have certain chores we do in the house,” Lacey said, turning the volume down herself. “I thought you might like to have some, too. You know, so you’ll feel like part of the family.” It had sounded good when Gina had said those words the day before, but she instantly knew that her awkward presentation wasn’t going to produce the result she was after.
“I’ll never be part of this stupid family,” Mackenzie said. “I don’t even want to be.”
Lacey tightened her grip on the steering wheel. “Well, I still think it’s important for you to do your share, don’t you?” she asked.
“What exactly do you want me to do?”
“You can pick,” Lacey said. “The bathrooms—”
“No way.”
“You can sweep the sand out of the kitchen. Or dust. You can vacuum if you want, but I know I always hated doing that when I was your age.”
Mackenzie rested her head against the headrest and looked up at the ceiling of the car. She let out a huge sigh.
“We haven’t even asked you to help with the dishes.” Lacey glanced at the girl again. In profile, Mackenzie had Jessica’s nose, right down to the indignant little flare of her nostrils.
“Why don’t you have a dishwasher?” Mackenzie asked.
“Because the house is supposed to be historically accurate back to the early twentieth century,” she explained for the hundredth time. “There were no dishwashers then.” It was her turn to sigh. “Don’t you think it’s even a little bit cool to live in an old lighthouse keeper’s house?” She always felt personally offended by Mackenzie’s negativity about the house. Even as an eleven-year-old, she’d had an appreciation of Kiss River’s history.
“There is nothing cool about it,” Mackenzie said. “It doesn’t even have air-conditioning.”
Lacey laughed at the small joke, but Mackenzie didn’t seem to notice that she’d made one. Perhaps she hadn’t meant to. God, she could be a sour kid. It’s fear. Lacey reminded herself of Bobby’s words. Remember that. She’s scared.
“So, how about you wash or dry the dishes?”
“Every meal?” Mackenzie sounded incredulous.
“No, just dinner.”
“Sometimes I eat at my grandmother’s.”
“Well, of course you wouldn’t have to do them at home when you eat over there.”
“And what about tonight?” Mackenzie asked. “Bobby’s taking me to a movie.”
“You’ll have plenty of time between dinner and the movie to dry the dishes.” She was grateful that Bobby was taking Mackenzie out; she wanted the evening with Rick, determined to make the effort to reconnect with him.
“Mom doesn’t dry the dishes,” Mackenzie said, not even seeming to notice that she spoke of her mother in the present tense. “She says it’s better to let them air-dry.”
“Well, there probably weren’t as many, since she used the dishwasher most of the time, right?” Lacey asked. “And there were just the two of you in the house. When there are as many dishes as we have, you have to dry them or there’s no room in the rack. And since you’ll be working in the kitchen, how about you sweep up after the dishes are done. You’ll be in there, anyway.”
Mackenzie let out her breath in a shocked little puff. “What am I,” she asked, “your maid?”
“No, you—”
“You’re probably happy my mom died so you could have someone come clean up your house.”
Lacey wanted to smack her. Pull the car to the side of the road and just let her have it, but she kept her hands tight on the wheel, her eyes straight ahead.
“That’s not true, Mackenzie,” she said. “And I think you know that.”
A silence stretched between them and Lacey could practically hear the wheels turning in Mackenzie’s brain.
“All right,” the girl said finally. “I’ll dry the dishes and sweep the kitchen. But I won’t vacuum or dust or any of that other stuff.”
“That’s fine,” Lacey said. “That’s fair. Thank you. The broom is in the pantry.”
“An actual broom?” Mackenzie said, as if she’d never seen one. “Do you even have to be historically accurate when you sweep? Mom always uses a Swiffer.”
“A Swiffer wouldn’t get up the sand in the kitchen,” Lacey said.
“You are so not like my mother,” Mackenzie said, turning up the volume on the radio again. “It’s hard to believe you were ever friends.”
After dinner that night, Lacey washed the dishes and Mackenzie dried. Or at least, she pretended to. The dishes were put away half-wet, and Lacey didn’t feel up to arguing with her over it. She wiped down the table and counter-tops as Mackenzie ineffectively swept the kitchen floor, as if the broom was too heavy for her to use properly. Was she being intentionally sloppy in her work or was she simply a lousy housekeeper? Whichever the case, Lacey kept her mouth shut. They’d had enough animosity between them that morning. She didn’t think she could handle any more that night.
Mackenzie was in her room when Bobby arrived to pick her up for the movie, and Lacey called up the stairs to let her know he was there.
“She has chores now,” she said, returning to the kitchen. “Drying the dishes and sweeping the floor.”
“Excellent,” Bobby said. “How’d she react to them?”
“She said I wanted her to be my maid. And if you notice—” she ran one bare foot across the floor “—she didn’t do such a great job.”
Smiling, he tugged at a strand of her hair, and he might have been touching her breasts for the shock it sent through her. His smile changed quickly to a grin, as if he knew how he was affecting her. He had to know. She turned away from the crooked grin, relieved to see Mackenzie walk into the room, grunting her hello to her father.
“You two better get going,” Lacey said, feigning a look at her watch to avoid Bobby’s eyes. She ushered them toward the door with a maternal sweeping of her hands. “Go on,” she said. “Have a good time.”
Once they were out the door, she leaned against the counter, arms folded tightly across her chest, eyes squeezed shut. Get a grip, she told herself. Since when had her hair become an erogenous zone?
Clay walked into the room. “Whoa,” he said, feeling the grit on the floor beneath his bare feet. “I thought Mackenzie was going to sweep?”
“She did.”
He looked at her quizzically. “You all right? What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.” She tried to look surprised by the question, wondering what he’d seen in her face.
Clay opened the pantry door and took out the broom. “Well, I have another idea for a job for her,” he said as he started to sweep.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Lacey said. “She’ll run away if we ask her to do anything else.”
“This one I think she’ll like.” Clay was smiling as he swept. “She can be the victim with the dogs.”
Lacey knew exactly what he meant. Clay needed people to hide in the woods for the search-and-rescue trainees to find. “That’s actually not a bad idea,” she said. She reached into the pantry for the dustpan and handed it to him. “But you’d better be the one to ask her,” she said. “She turns up her nose at anything I suggest.”
Upstairs she took a quick shower and changed into long pants and a T-shirt, then walked out to her car for the drive to Rick’s house. Although it was still light outside by the time she turned onto the road leading to his cottage, the trees quickly engulfed her car and it might as well have been ten o’clock instead of eight. She parked behind his BMW, got out and walked along the wooded path to his house.
The trees created a nest here, she thought. A dark little nest. No wonder Bobby had trouble working in Rick’s cottage, and no wonder he loved working in her sunroom. A few tim
es in the evenings, after Bobby had left, she’d walk into the sunroom to stare at the piece he was creating: a mammoth tusk belt buckle adorned with the intricate image of three dogs. Every day there was more detail in the portrait. Still no color, but the precision of the stippling and engraving was simply astonishing. She could smell Bobby in that room. He wasn’t one for aftershave, but the scent of his shampoo or his deodorant or maybe the laundry detergent he used on his clothes lingered in the room, mixing with the faint tobacco smell that was so much a part of him, and she liked to simply sit there and breathe it in.
Damn it. Here she was, about to knock on Rick’s door, and she was still fixated on Bobby. Her counselor—whom she was thinking she might need to revisit sometime soon—had warned her that her resolve would be tested occasionally. She’d thought her test had been the men at the gym, those hard-muscled guys who cut their eyes at her when they thought she wasn’t looking, who left the gym in tight jeans and climbed onto their Harleys. She knew now that her real test had arrived in an old VW bus.
Rick opened the cottage door with a smile, his hair damp from a shower, his teeth perfect and very, very white, even in the dim light of the woods. She smiled back, as warmly as she could. Gina had thought nothing of Clay in the beginning, she reminded herself, and then he’d grown into someone she treasured.
“I made dessert,” he said.
“You made it?” That was the premise for their getting together tonight: dessert. She’d expected something store-bought. Ice cream, perhaps, or cookies. She followed him into the kitchen, where he’d been slicing strawberries to put on top of a freshly baked angel food cake.
“I’m impressed!” she said. “How can I help?”
“You can just stand there and talk to me,” he said, slicing a fat strawberry into a bowl.
“How is it, having Bobby live with you?” she asked before she could stop herself. “He’s been here over a week now. You’ve got to promise you’ll let me know if his welcome starts wearing thin.”
“It’s no problem at all,” Rick said. “We get along fine.”
She wondered what conversation would be like between them, two men with absolutely nothing in common.
Rick glanced at her as he picked up another strawberry. “He’s in AA. Did you know that?”
“Yes, and I think it’s great,” she said. “Tom’s in AA and it turned him around.”
“He goes to a lot of meetings,” Rick said, and she could not quite tell if he thought that was a good thing or not.
She glanced toward the corner of the living room, where his computer monitor sat on a table, next to two tall stacks of papers.
“How about you tell me about your book,” she said. “We’ve never really talked about it.” They had discussed his work so little. Always talking about her, about Mackenzie, about Zachary Pointer’s parole hearing. Maybe the reason she felt so little for him was because she hadn’t allowed herself to get to know him.
“That’s because I don’t want to bore you,” he said, the smile still on his face as he pulled a bowl of whipped cream from the refrigerator.
“I want to hear about it, though.” She picked up one of the strawberry slices and popped it into her mouth.
“Let’s construct our desserts and eat out on the deck,” he said, handing her a serrated knife to use on the angel food cake. “And then I’ll tell you all about my book until your eyes glaze over.”
They piled berries onto their slices of cake and topped the desserts with whipped cream, and then she followed him outside. The deck tipped a bit to the south, and Lacey felt as though the rotting wood might cave in under her weight. She sat down on a creaky old porch swing, while he lit a couple of citronella candles. It had grown dark out, and the only other light came from the cottage windows.
Lacey swallowed her first mouthful of cake. “It’s delicious,” she said with sincerity. “You would make a good wife.”
He sat down next to her on the swing, laughing as though he found that very funny. “Glad you like it,” he said.
“So—” she stuck her fork in a slice of berry “—you were going to tell me about your book.”
“Ah, yes.” He took a bite of cake and chewed it slowly, his gaze focused in the direction of the sound. He swallowed, then rested his plate on his thighs. “Well, it’s titled Cases and Concepts of Federal Income Taxation and it’s geared toward the law student,” he said.
“Uh-huh.” She injected all the interest she could into the tone of her voice.
He told her about a couple of the more interesting—to him, at least—cases, and although she fought the boredom, her face apparently could not mask it.
“Your eyes are glazing over,” he said after he’d been talking for a few minutes. He leaned toward her for a better look. “Literally. I can see the candles reflected in a thick layer of glossy, dewy tears.”
“Sorry,” she said with an apologetic smile. “I tried, but it’s hard for me to get a handle on.”
“And you don’t need to.” He lowered his empty plate to the floor of the deck and slipped his arm around her shoulders. He smelled good, and this was the scent of expensive aftershave, no doubt about it. She turned her head to him and it was she who started the kiss. His lips were light on hers at first, and then she felt his tongue gently slip into her mouth. She wanted to pull away, but held her ground. Feelings will follow behavior. Wasn’t that what it said in the book? Fake it till you make it. Her mind was working overtime as she tried to return the ardor of his kisses. If she behaved as though she wanted this, she might truly start to want it. Or maybe it was a good sign that she didn’t want to simply take this man to bed. Maybe that meant he was the right guy for her. But when Rick lifted his hand to touch her breast through her T-shirt, she caught his fingers in hers.
“Sorry,” he said.
“Don’t be,” she said. “I’m being ridiculous.”
“No, you’re not.”
“You must think I’m a huge prude,” she said.
He shook his head. “I’m in no rush,” he said. “Should we stop? Play cards? I found a checkerboard in one of the kitchen cupboards.”
He was so patient with her. So sweet. She suddenly realized that she felt genuine affection for him, and the feeling both surprised and comforted her. She leaned back to get a good look at him. “You’re really amazing,” she said.
“So are you.”
“Okay,” she said, standing up from the porch swing. “So where are the cards?”
CHAPTER 28
Lacey sat next to Rick on a bench at the far side of the house, the area away from the ocean, where Clay did his “box training.” Eight large wooden crates were spread out across the sand, varying distances between them. A young woman held a nearly white golden retriever on a leash, while Clay explained to Mackenzie what she was to do. Mackenzie held a glove in her hand, wadding it up over and over again as she listened intently to Clay’s words. Lacey leaned forward, her straw hat shading her face, trying unsuccessfully to hear what her brother was saying. She was aware of Rick’s hand resting lightly on her back. It felt like nothing to her, and that frustrated her. His hand might as well have been a dish towel lying against her back. She laid her own hand on his thigh, struggling to feel, if not a jolt of electricity at touching him, at least some small itch of desire, but there was nothing. How long was she supposed to wait for the feelings to follow her behavior? She felt safe and comfortable with Rick, and that was the most important thing, she told herself. She’d never—not once—experienced that sense of security with a guy she’d dated. Rick was interested in more than her body. They were creating the sort of foundation they could build a relationship on. What other man would play cards with her until late at night, when he’d obviously had something a bit more carnal in mind?
Bobby had returned to Rick’s house around eleven, after his movie-and-ice-cream date with Mackenzie. If he’d thought it strange to find Lacey and his housemate in the middle of a game of gin rummy, he
’d said nothing about it. Lacey wondered if Bobby was watching her and Rick right now. The bench they were sitting on would be in clear view from the sunroom where he was working, and ever since taking her seat next to Rick, she’d been aware of his presence somewhere behind her.
Clay told the woman to walk around the side of the house so that her dog would be unable to see what was happening in the yard. Then he took the glove from Mackenzie and sent her out to one of the boxes. She skittered across the sand, a happiness in her gait that Lacey had not seen before—although Bobby’s description of her enthusiastic response to horseback riding sounded as though it might have been similar. The boxes had doors hinged on one side, and Mackenzie pulled open the door and slipped inside. Once she was safely hidden away, Clay called the woman and her dog back.
“Is he going to sniff the glove and then find Mackenzie by following her scent?” Rick asked.
“Uh-huh.” Lacey had seen Clay’s box training before, and apparently, the golden retriever had, too. The dog sniffed hungrily at the glove, his whole body quivering with excitement. When the woman unfastened the leash from his collar, he took off, running directly for the crate in which Mackenzie was hiding. He sat down next to it, his tail beating the sand, and let out one bark. Mackenzie hopped out of the crate, laughing, letting the dog knock her to the ground. The woman jogged over to the box to give the dog a treat, although it was clear that Mackenzie’s affection had been all the reward he’d needed.
The sequence was repeated several times, with Mackenzie hiding in a different box each time. Clay had her run around the area before hiding, so that the dog would not simply follow her scent to the correct crate. Mackenzie was perfect for this. Lacey had occasionally served as the “victim” for her brother’s training, and she’d found it boring, but the girl seemed to have plenty of energy for the process and it was apparent she adored dogs. Maybe they should consider getting her one of her own.
“He’s going to the wrong crate,” Rick said quietly. The dog sniffed around the box in which Mackenzie had hidden the last time.