Crazy For You (13 page)

“You get all the hot women,” Nick said, and Max said,

“I’m going upstairs to put that bed together. You go talk to her.”

“Nah,” Nick said. “I know when I’m outclassed. Once they see you, I’m history.”

“This thing is huge,” Max said half an hour later, tightening the last bolt. “She have some plans we don’t know about?”

“I have no idea,” Nick said, but it was hard to look at the bed, glowing like the floors even in the growing twilight, and not think of Quinn on it, in it, under him.
Knock it off,
he told himself, and then he thought about her some more.

“We have a problem,” Darla said behind him, making him jump in guilt. “We seem to have lost that damn dog.”

“She’s nowhere in the house or the next-door yards,” Quinn said behind her, her voice a little shaky. “I don’t get it. The gate is still closed and there are no holes under the fence. I checked the alley anyway, and she’s not there. The next-door neighbor said there was some meter reader here. Maybe he let her out.”

“Is this a sort of skinny black ratty dog?” Max said, looking out the front bedroom window. “Because there’s one of those in the street, and there’s an Animal Control truck headed its way.”

Quinn was down the stairs faster than Nick had ever seen her move, and he followed her through the dining room and out the front door just as Katie sniffed her way into the front yard.

Animal Control slowed to a crawl.

“I’ll go call them off,” Quinn told Nick. “You get Katie.”

Katie danced around the yard, looking for trouble, watching him bright-eyed. He took a step toward her and she crouched down, her bony butt in the air, ready to play.

“I’m not chasing you, mutt,” he said to her, and she cocked her head at him, clearly ready to make a break for it if he came closer.

“Cute. You run in the street, you’re hamburger,” he said, knowing as long as he talked to her, she’d listen. “So why don’t we just end this now?”

He took a step toward her, and she danced away, never taking her eyes off his face.

Okay, fine. Part of him wanted to just let her run away— she was the one who was causing all the trouble, breaking Quinn and Bill up, screwing with his life—but Quinn had asked him to, and he didn’t want Katie getting hurt, even if she was a rat on stilts, and besides, there was Animal Control.

So what did he have that this dog wanted?

There was probably a Burger King bag someplace in the truck. “How do you feel about really old fries?” he called to the dog, and she danced closer again, two steps forward, one back. He opened the passenger door to the truck and leaned in, feeling under the seat for possible trash, and Katie leaped in, scrambling across his back to sit in the driver’s seat.

Nick got in and slammed the door, trapping her inside with him. “Gotcha.”

Katie put her paws on the driver’s side window and looked out anxiously, probably wondering why nothing was moving. She looked over her shoulder at Nick and whined.

“We are not going for a ride,” he said, and she barked at him.

Actually, it wasn’t a bad idea. As long as she thought she’d always get a ride if she got in the truck, she’d be a piece of cake to catch, so if he took her around the block, he’d be solving a lot of future problems for Quinn.

Also he could stall going back in that light-filled house full of Quinn and beds for another fifteen minutes. He slid across the seat, picking Katie up to trade places, and backed the truck out of the driveway, waving to Quinn as he went.

Katie immediately climbed in his lap to press her nose against his window.

“There’s another one on your side,” he told her, but she was light and she didn’t squirm, and after the first minute, she sighed and sat down and leaned against him without trembling as he drove, watching out the window with her chin on his shoulder as the world went past.

She was a good little dog, Nick realized. She still looked like hell, of course, but she was a nice little dog. He scratched her behind the ear, and Katie leaned against his hand a little, the same way Quinn had that night.

Quinn had been so tempting there in the dark, so yielding.

And she was so off-limits he didn’t even know why he was thinking about her again.

He finished his circuit and pulled in the driveway, and Quinn came over to the truck, crossing her arms over that fuzzy purple sweater to keep herself warm. She looked great. He opened the door and handed Katie out to her, saying, “She likes to ride, so that’s an easy way to catch her.”

“Thank you,” Quinn began, smiling up at him with that lush mouth, all huge eyes and warm curves, and he cut her off with, “Don’t mention it, glad to help. Well, you’re all moved in, so I gotta go.” He slammed the door and waved as he backed out of the drive, and she watched him go with her mouth open.

It wasn’t until he was all the way back to the station that he realized he’d left Max behind.

She hesitated for a minute, and then she stepped out on the porch with him. “We can stack them in the dining room for now.”

She helped him carry the books in, which was great because it meant she was with him, but not great because it meant he’d get done twice as fast, that he wouldn’t have enough time to talk to her, to make sure she was all right, to make her talk to him again the way she used to. He needed to see her more often was the problem, so on one of his trips in, while she was at the car, he opened the shutter on the far window so he could see in if he ever had to. Just to make sure she was all right. It was the window that was behind the fence on the side with the vacant lot, so nobody would see him and stop him from checking on her.

The damn dog growled at him, and he fought back the urge to kick it. It was supposed to be gone by now, run over or in the pound, not here. But kicking it would be stupid. She might catch him doing it, and that was all he needed to make Quinn suspicious that he was the one who’d let the dog out.

When he came back in two trips later, she’d closed the shutter again—had she realized what he was doing?—so when she left for the last box, he reached over and snapped one of the lower slats off its staple so it wouldn’t go up any more. It wasn’t much of a change, he wasn’t even sure he could see through it, but it was something.

Anything so he could see her, see what she was doing, be with her until she came to her senses again.

“That’s it,” she said as she came in with the last box. She was a little breathless and her cheeks were red from the cold and she was so beautiful, he took a step toward her and reached for her.

She shook her head and stepped back as the dog growled again. “No,” she said. “I’m really sorry, but no. I’m happy, and I’m not coming back. This is my house now. I’m staying.”

And there was nothing he could do but nod and smile and wish her good luck even though he felt like hell, like shouting at her, like grabbing her, like making her listen.

Thank God Bobby had stopped her loan and she’d be out of there soon. And once she was out of there, she’d have to get rid of the dog, and things would be back to normal again. If it hadn’t been for Bobby stopping that loan, he didn’t know what he would have done.

Darla felt one tiny twinge—
are you with Barbara?
—and then stifled it, knowing Max wouldn’t lie to her. “No problem,” she said in her best Understanding Wife voice. “I’ll keep dinner hot for you.”

“Don’t bother,” he said.

Don’t bother?
“Well, I’ll be here whenever you get home,” she chirped, determined to make this work.

“Good,” Max said, sounding a little confused. “That’s where I figured you’d be.”

She’d fed the boys, argued with them about their homework, and was packing them off to bed when Max finally came home, covered in grease and exhausted. By the time he got out of the shower, the boys were asleep, so he plopped himself down alone in the dark living room to watch the news in the TV’s weird blue light, turning down her offer of a late dinner.

“I appreciate it,” he said. “But I’m beat.”

“No problem,” she said brightly and went off to lock herself in the bathroom.

She took her hair down in the bright light from the round bulbs that surrounded their huge mirror, and she brushed it until all the kinks from the pins that had held it fast in her French twist were gone and it flowed silky, way past her shoulders.

Max loved it down. She used to trim it to get rid of the split ends, just half an inch, and he’d say, “You cut your hair.”

“Just a little,” she’d say and let it fall over him, tickle his skin, and he’d pull her close—

How long had it been since he’d done that?

She clamped down on critical thoughts. It didn’t matter. Tonight, they’d be what they’d used to be.

She flipped her hair back over her shoulders. She was getting a little long in the tooth for hair this length. If she’d been her client, she’d have said, “Cut it, go for something snappier, more sophisticated.” Long hair like this only worked on waiflike women, anyway. It was for little girls, perennial Alices.

And for women with husbands like Max.

She ignored her sensible long flannel nightgown hanging on the back of the door—she had at least a dozen, all gifts from her mother every Christmas—stripped off her clothes, and slid the white chiffon gown over her head. It felt like cream sliding over her skin, cool and smooth and liquid; it rippled around her like a waterfall. She flounced it a little to straighten it, and then watched it settle around her curves. You could see through it, her nipples were dark circles and down below—

If Max looked horrified at this, she was divorcing him and Barbara could have him.

She swished around the bathroom a little, not taking her eyes off the mirror, watching the chiffon settle and slide as her hair floated about her shoulders, turning herself on with how good she looked, how lovely the chiffon felt, how nuts Max was going to go when he saw her.

She heard him come into the adjoining bedroom and unlocked the bathroom door, waiting for him to walk through the door to get ready for bed. Maybe they wouldn’t even make it to the bedroom. Maybe he’d just boost her up on the counter. They’d done it that way in the station bathroom once and that had been at the station, not in their own house—surely he couldn’t say no in his own house. He sure hadn’t said no in the station. She shivered a little remembering it.

They’d done it other places, too. Like in her bedroom while her mother slept next door; Debbie had been at a slumber party and Darla had whispered, “I want a party, too,” and Max had climbed a tree and almost killed himself getting in her window. And in the backseat of Max’s old clunker, a hundred times it seemed like, although it couldn’t have been more than a couple dozen, really. Even in the front seat of the station truck once. They’d taken it to the drive-in because the seat was higher, they could see better, and then they’d only seen the first half of the first movie.
Hours,
she thought.
We touched each other for hours.
It had been the first time she’d come, the first time she thought,
I get it,
the first time she’d realized why girls were dumb enough to get pregnant because you’d take chances for that kind of glory.

She could really see her nipples now, poking against the chiffon, and she wanted him so much she was breathless with it.

Which was when she realized he wasn’t coming in the bathroom.

.She opened the door into a pitch-dark bedroom. “Max?” she said and walked cautiously to the bed in the light from the bathroom, trying not to trip over anything that might be in her path. “Max?”

She turned on the bedside light. He was stretched out on top of the duvet, his handsome face slack in complete unconsciousness.

“Max?” She crawled on the bed and shook him a little. “Honey?”

He took a deep breath in stages, almost sighs, and she realized from seventeen years of sleeping with him that he was out cold. Even if she managed to wake him up, he’d just blink at her; he’d still be asleep, really.

This was what she got for waiting until bedtime.

Of course, when she didn’t wait for bedtime, he was horrified. Just like that damn Bill.

She was so mad, she punched him in the shoulder, and he frowned, but he didn’t wake up.

She let herself fall back onto the bed beside with a scream of frustration, but that didn’t wake him up, either.

Nothing was going to wake him up. Not even the trump for the second coming.

Just thinking about corning made her furious all over again, so she punched him one more time, then crawled under the covers to put herself to sleep.