Cool Shade (14 page)

Enid hit her.

Not a wimpy, girlie shove, but a hard opened-palmed slap against her face, knocking Maddie against the wall, bringing tears to her eyes.

Enid was right, they'd never been close, never gotten along, but even in the years when they had no contact, Maddie had always clung to the notion that Enid was still Enid.

This wasn't Enid. This was somebody else. Somebody Maddie didn't know or want to know.

"Get out!" Enid screamed, her face red, flecks of spit flying from her mouth. "Get out of my house!"

Maddie was only too glad to comply. Whoever said blood was thicker than water didn't have a relative like Enid.

Mr. Self-Destruct

Maddie was sure she hadn't gotten all of her things, but she didn't care. She just wanted out. She had Hemingway. He was all that really mattered.

Three trips and Maddie’s car was loaded, with Hemingway yowling in his cage on the passenger seat. Still wearing her gray sleep shirt over a pair of faded jeans, Maddie slid into the driver's seat and reached for the key.

As soon as the engine turned over, she got an unpleasant reminder. No muffler. Her car sounded like a dragster. The mouse that roared.

Maddie put the vehicle in gear. The car limped away from the curb, the headlights illuminating nothing but what was directly in front of her.

A fitting analogy of her life. In her case, she could only hope that it was the destination that mattered most and not the journey.

She squinted in the rearview mirror and spotted a flashing red light. Great. A cop.

She pulled over and cut the engine.

Blessed silence.

"Do you realize what time it is?"

What a coincidence. A cop copping an attitude. The weirdest things went through her head at the oddest times.

"According to my watch"—she lifted her arm— "almost two o'clock."

"We had several calls earlier today complaining about the noise your car is making."

She looked past him to the row of residential housing. "Sorry."

"We have a noise ordinance in Chester."

She could tell he wanted her to beg, to explain, to grovel, only to give her a ticket anyway. She wasn't playing that game. She pulled out her Arizona driver's license and handed it to him so he could write his ticket.

He scribbled on his tablet. "Are you living here or visiting?"

"Living here temporarily." No way was she going to fork over the money for plates and a driver's license.

He handed her license back. "If you're going to be here any longer, you have to get a new license and plates, or apply for a temporary residence permit."

"Yeah, I'll be sure to do that." Just as soon as I win the lottery.

"I'm going to have to impound the vehicle."

Was her guardian angel taking the day off? Had he quit the job completely? Was he sitting somewhere, telling another angel just how impossible his last case had been?

"You're kidding," Maddie said, even though she knew he wasn't.

"In order to get it back, you'll have to have the muffler repaired, plus pay the towing and impoundment fee. Impoundment is fifty dollars a day, so the quicker you get things taken care of, the better."

What a guy.

He didn't offer to help her with her stuff. Instead, he stood and watched as she unloaded Hemingway and one of her suitcases. She'd have to get her other things later. When, no
if
, she reclaimed her car.

The cop reluctantly offered to give her a ride somewhere, which only served to remind her that she had absolutely no idea where she was going. "No thanks. You've helped me enough already."

No reaction.

The tow truck came.

Maddie sat on her suitcase and watched as one end of her car was hoisted off the ground, watched as it was towed down the tree-lined street.

The cop followed the tow truck, leaving her alone in the darkness, leaving her contemplating the houses full of people with normal lives.

Hemingway let out a tiny, frightened meow, reminding Maddie what an unfit mother she was.

"I'm sorry, Hemingway. You should be living with some sweet old lady, eating expensive cat food and using the kind of litter that clumps."

He meowed again, seeming to agree.

Maddie got to her feet, put her head and one arm through the shoulder strap of her purse, picked up Hemingway's cage in one hand, her suitcase in the other, and started walking in the direction of the radio station.

One block later, she stopped and shifted her loads to opposite hands, then continued. Two blocks later, she heard a kind of light popping over her head. It started out slowly, then gradually increased. She stopped and looked up at the tree leaves. Something fell on her face. Something wet and cold.

~0~

Enid sat on the edge of the bed, chewing the skin around her fingernails. What the hell was she going to do now? Call Al, she supposed. It hadn't been a bad life, a hundred bucks a lay. Sometimes, if the client passed out, you could get a lot more. And if the client was someone well-known, especially someone in politics, you could blackmail them.

No, it hadn't been bad.

Pound, pound.

Someone at the front door.

Had her little sister come back? She hoped not.

Maddie. She'd always expected too much from Enid, more than Enid could ever give. There had been a short time when Enid had tried to please her younger sister, tried to live within her ridiculous, idealistic boundaries. But that hadn't been Enid. She'd smothered in that place.

There was the pounding again, followed by a man's voice shouting Maddie’s name.

Enid jumped from the bed, ran down the steps, sidestepping the mess she'd made earlier, and unlocked the door.

Eddie Berlin.

Well, well.

Standing there blinking his eyes against the glare of the porch light.

Just as good-looking as ever. She'd do him for free anytime.

"Where's Maddie?"

"Eddie, right?"

She struck a sexy pose, hand braced on the door edge, one bare leg lifted, toes pointed. Just looking at him made her horny. She'd do it with him right there on the front porch. Wouldn't that give old nutty Evelyn something to sputter about?

Berlin wasn't her usual type. She liked guys who worked out, who were more physical than mental. She preferred her men hot and dumb. Eddie didn't fit that mold, but he made her want to drop her panties and lift her dress.

Those eyes. God, those eyes.
She'd forgotten the sex appeal that oozed from him.

At the moment, those eyes were frowning at her. "Eden? Or is it Enid?"

Bastard. Stinking bastard. "Don't you remember the names of the women you fuck?"

He recoiled, giving his head a little shake as if he couldn't have heard right. "Oh, I remember you."

But he didn't remember sleeping with her, Enid realized. Which was probably because he never had.

He was looking for Maddie. Why was he looking for Maddie? What would he want with her? With her plain face, her plain body, her plain lifestyle. Last she'd known, her little sister was still a virgin, holding out for who knew what.

Had her little sister done Eddie Berlin? The idea made Enid furious. The bitch. The sneaking little bitch.

"My sister's not here, but I am."

He didn't even blink, didn't even act as if he noticed her. He was too busy trying to piece together information, too busy checking out the trashed room behind her.

"You do Maddie, too?" she asked.

He reached for her.

But instead of grabbing her the way she wanted, he took her arm and shoved her back three steps, following her inside.

"Maddie!" He strode toward the stairs.

He'd apparently been there before, apparently knew the layout. Interesting.

Behind him, Enid slammed the door. "She's not here. I kicked her out."

He swung around. "You kicked out your own sister?"

"Stop talking about Maddie. I'm sick of hearing about her." She was so hot, so mad at his lack of response.

He had to want her.

He
would
want her.

She threw herself at him, wrapping her arms around him, pressing her breasts against the softness of his T-shirt, the firmness of his chest, wrapping a leg around his hip. She rubbed against him. "Forget about her." She cupped him through his jeans, caressing him, trying to stimulate an erection. She wasn't going to allow him to reject her again.

He made a sound of disgust, deep in his throat. At the same time he shoved her, almost knocking her down.

She staggered, caught herself, and stood upright. "Have you been castrated or something?"

"Where's Maddie?"

"Get out of here."

"Tell me where Maddie is."

"How the hell should I know?"

"You mean you kicked her out without any idea of where she was going? Or if she even had a place to go?"

She stared at him, hating him, almost as much as she hated Maddie. "She didn't have anything I needed."

Looking as if he couldn't have heard right, he shook his head. "Are they breeding machines like you somewhere? If they are, the place needs to be blown up. I feel sorry as hell for Maddie, having to put up with a sister like you."

Enid screamed. It was a shriek that started deep in her lungs, a cry of rage. She ran at him, nails curved.

Before he could stop her, she managed one rake down the side of his face.

He grabbed her by her arms, holding her away from him. She kicked, feeling a nice satisfaction when her foot connected with his shin, relishing the pain in her own toes.

"Maddie's no better than me," she said through gritted teeth. "She's a slut just like me. You want to know where she is? She went to Arizona. Maddie went to Arizona. Back to her boyfriend."

"If that's true, why didn't you just say so before?"

"If I'd told you where she'd gone, you would have left immediately, isn't that right?"

He didn't answer. But he was thinking. Almost believing.

"Isn't that right?" she repeated.

He let her go.

He turned and left.

~0~

Son of a bitch.

Eddie stood on the porch trying to get his bearings.

Son of a bitch.

He’d faced what he feared the most for her.

Was it true?

Had Maddie left?

She’d come to Nebraska to find her missing sister, a prize of a woman who was no longer missing. So it stood to reason that Maddie had gone back to where she'd come from.

He’d been too slow.

Too late.

Too late he'd realized that what he felt for her was more than irritation, exasperation, more than lust.

Now, looking back, he could see that the attraction had been there quite a while. Maybe not at the initial moment when Murphy had attacked her, but later. The fear he'd felt when he saw the blood on her blouse. It had been the fear of loss. The fear of losing not only another human being, but a human being who meant something special to him.

Love.

He didn't know if it was love. He wasn't sure what that word meant. He just knew that with her in his life, he wanted to go on. He'd found himself looking forward, thinking about tomorrow and the next day. The hollow emptiness hadn't visited him in a long time.

But he could feel it now. Creeping in around the edges of his mind, filling his soul with the kind of grief that came with a painful loss.

He missed her already.

Twice he'd left the safety of his home for her. Twice he'd used her as the treasure, the reward that would make the hardship of the journey worthwhile.

Now she was gone.

And he was in that lonely place again.

He tried to move, but his feet weighed a hundred pounds each. They held him there, stuck to the porch.

Go.

Move.

Feeling like Frankenstein's monster, he lifted one foot, then the other, forcing himself to walk down the steps.

He knew it was raining. He felt it pelting his face, but at the same time his skin was numb. He was aware of the impact, but he couldn't feel the wetness, couldn't feel the cold.

He reached the sidewalk.

He didn't bother with his dirt bike. Instead, he began to walk. Faster and faster, until he was running. He left the sidewalk, giving it up for the wider street. He ran until his lungs burned. He ran until his side ached and his leg muscles hurt. He ran until he started shaking and couldn't run anymore. When that happened, he crawled under a bush and pulled his knees up to his chin.

~0~

At five a.m. Joan Fielding couldn't sleep any longer so she got up and started a pot of coffee. Years of being a doctor's wife had left her unable to sleep more than a few hours at a time, even on quiet nights. She loved her husband, but more and more as her life passed she wondered if she'd made a mistake marrying a doctor. She was glad that Max was one of those rare psychiatrists who was available for his patients, night or day. But there were so many people, with so many problems.

She was almost finished with her second cup of coffee when the kitchen doorbell rang. She put down her cup. She was used to these early morning visits from people looking for Max, needing Max.

It would be nice to be needed.

She turned on the outside light and unlocked the door, careful to keep the chain in place.