Marrying Maddy (7 page)

He extended his hand, but she pretended not to see it, walking straight past him to put her arms out to Matt as he stood up to kiss her proffered cheek. “Hello, darling.”

Joe smiled, encouraged, as Jessie went in search of Mrs. Ballantine and the spare key. If Maddy didn't care about him, she wouldn't bother to lie about whether or not she'd ever known him. She would have told this Matt Garvey guy—nice guy, Joe thought, which was a pity, because he was going
down
—all about him and they would have had a huge laugh over how she had once dated the new software king.

But she hadn't told him about her past, their love affair, that fateful trip to Las Vegas. She hadn't told him a single thing about her old lover, her first lover.

Her only lover? If that peck on the cheek was to be believed, yeah.

Interesting. Very interesting. Everything Almira Chandler had told him it would be.

And, speaking of Almira the Plotter, with the energy of a twelve-year-old and the smiling face of a woman born to flirt—and revel in it—she just about bounced into the room.

“Hello, all! Joe, how nice to see you again. Settling in, are you? My, don't you look handsome in that shirt. Matches your eyes. But you probably already know that, you devil, you. In fact, I'll bet you have an entire closet
stuffed
with blue shirts. Matt, Jessie, I've had the most lovely day!”

Everyone had already turned to watch Almira Chandler come into the room, dropping packages in her wake as she crossed the room and collapsed onto one of the couches.

“What a day, children, what a day! I can't believe the
bargains
one can get at those Reading outlet stores. I thought it would be a lark, having Maddy take us there for a peek after we looked at linens, but then she practically had to
drag
me out of those wonderful, wonderful stores. Does anyone here wear a size six?”

“I do, Allie,” Jessie said, warily eyeing the packages as she reentered the room and handed Joe a single key on a bright gold key chain. “Why?”

“Oh, good,” Almira exclaimed, bouncing back up from the couch with the energy of a long distance runner. She went straight to a pink plastic bag and
pulled out the sexiest, most ridiculous looking sheer ivory negligee in the history of sexy lingerie. It even had a matching feather boa.

“Allie…” Jessie said, backing away as her grandmother approached her.

“Oh, stand still, darling,” Almira said, winking at the two men as she wound the boa around Jessie's throat.

Jessie inhaled, nearly swallowed a stray feather, and felt herself blushing to the roots of her hair as Almira held the negligee up to her, pulling the sheer material taut over her breasts. “There, boys. What do you think? Not at all bridal, but then, who needs bridal, right? Some things are just for the fun of it.”

Joe copped a quick look at Matt Garvey's strained features and thought that the French sure could have used a few strategists like Almira Chandler at Waterloo. “Very nice. Very nice,” he said.

“She bought one for herself, too. In hot pink, no less,” Maddy said, rolling her eyes. “So? Are we ready to go?”

Joe shook his head, pitying both Maddy and Jessie, who clearly were uncomfortable, each for her own reasons. For himself, he was enjoying himself mightily.

There was a whole lot going on in the Chandler drawing room, several layers and levels of intrigue and misdirection, although it seemed that only he and Almira knew about any of it. What would happen if everyone else were let in on the joke? All the not-so-funny jokes?

“Yes,” Matt echoed, coughing into his fist, struggling gentlemanly to find a way out of what could only be a bad situation getting worse. “Very nice,
indeed, Almira. You made a good choice. And you're ready to leave, Maddy? Anybody else hungry? I'm starved. Why don't the five of us go out for something to eat?”

“Five of us?” Almira parroted, looking confused. Then she brightened. “Oh, no. No, no, no, Matt, thank you anyway. I'm
exhausted,
” she went on, deliberately drooping her shoulders, just a moment too late to look less than ready for a quick four minute mile in stiletto heels. “I think I'll just have some soup and a sandwich, and make an early night of it. But you four go on, have a nice time, get to know each other better.”

“Allie, no, I don't think—” Maddy said quickly.

“Sounds good to me,” Matt said at the same time, looking toward Joe.

“My…my hair,” Jessie offered quickly. “I thought I'd wash—”

“Works for me, too,” Joe said brightly, pulling the keys to his Mercedes out of his pocket. “My car's already out of the garage, so we could all go in it. That way somebody can give me directions.”

“But—”

Almira cut Maddy off in midprotest. “Well, then, that's settled. Good. Have a lovely evening, children. And, Joe? Don't let Matt try to talk you into putting all your money in his bank. Only half of it,” she said with a wink, then picked up her packages and all but skipped out of the room.

“Miserable, conniving…” Maddy gritted out almost under her breath, but Joe was standing close and overheard her.

“I love her madly,” he whispered quietly to her as he took her arm, led her toward the foyer. “In
fact, if you won't marry me, I may ask Almira to elope with me instead.”

“I think I already suggested something like that,” Maddy countered, pulling her arm free, halting to wait for Matt. “Darling?” she said, slipping her hand around his elbow, holding on to him in a near-death grip. “I've missed you today.”

“I've missed you, too, Maddy, but I'm glad you and Almira had such a good time,” Matt answered, patting her hand.

Joe fought back the urge to gag. He'd seen more passion in a dog food commercial.

He stayed where he was as Jessie slowly brought up the rear, then held out his arm to her so that she really had no choice but to take it. “I'm sorry I didn't phone to cancel the dinner my grandmother planned,” she said quietly as they followed Maddy and Matt out of the house.

“I'm not, as I'm still going to have the pleasure of your company this evening,” Joe told her. “Now, loosen up and pretend I'm fascinating, all right?”

“What?” Jessie asked, stopping dead on the front porch. “I don't think you understood me, Mr. O'Malley.”

“Joe,” he said, holding up his hand to correct her.

“You know who you are,” Jessie said, gathering up her professionalism and trying to apply it to this truly insane situation. “I will not be a party to this ludicrous plan of yours and Allie's, and I told her so this morning. Now I'm telling you. Maddy is my sister and I love her. She's happy with Matt, so why don't you just fold up your mansion and steal away, or whatever.”

“Yes, they are happy with each other, aren't
they?” Joe agreed, looking at the happy couple as they walked across the lawns, skirting the end of the split rail fence. “Just like brother and sister. Or, if I'm not too far off base, brother and sister-
in-law.
”

“You're not only off base, Mr. O'Malley,” Jessie said, her cheeks burning. “You're completely out of the ballpark.”

“Am I, Jessie?” he asked, motioning for her to precede him down the three steps to the driveway. “I don't think so. And neither do you. As a matter of fact, I'm the answer to all your prayers, aren't I?”

“I would never do anything to hurt my sister. Never.”

“And I'm not asking you to, Jessie. Neither Almira nor I are asking you to do anything remotely like that.”

“Then what are you asking me?”

Joe smiled, knowing he'd won at least this one battle, even without Almira's help. “I'm just asking you to smile at me a time or two tonight, let me smile back at you. Maybe lean our heads together, whisper a time or two. Then you can look at your sister, see if she's also smiling, or if she's doing a slow burn, looking like she's ready to sink a steak knife into my heart.”

“And if she is? Looking ready to kill you, that is?”

“Ah, then you'll know she still loves me, just as I still love her. That should ease your conscience when I ask you to come over to my house tomorrow to help me decide on curtain materials or whatever excuse I can come up with at such short notice.”

Jessie bit her lip, watching as Maddy and Matt
walked along, not even holding hands. She'd seen movies of sailors walking the plank with more enthusiasm.

What was going on? Was Maddy having second thoughts? Was Matt?

Was she?

“Arranging furniture,” she said at last, giving in to Joe's persuasive manner, to her own hopes. “That sounds more plausible.”

Joe pulled her against his shoulder, giving her a hug. “That's my girl. I'm going to enjoy having you as a sister-in-law.”

“You're unbelievably sure of yourself, aren't you…Joe?”

“Made me what I am today, Jessie,” he told her, taking her hand in his as they approached the car. “I don't suppose you'd agree to hand-feeding me oysters out of the half-shell at dinner tonight? Or maybe that's just a little over the top.”

Jessie giggled in spite of herself, and Maddy stiffened, frowned.

Joe opened the front passenger door for Jessie and smiled over the top of the car, looking into the slowly setting sun. Yup, it was going to be a real fun evening….

I
f he smiles at her like that one more time, I'm going to lose my dinner, Maddy thought, pushing her fork so hard against her plate that the tines began to bend.
And what's Jessie doing, anyway? Giggling at every word Joe says? Jessie's giggling? Jessie
never
giggles. Never!

But Jessie was giggling. She was smiling, laughing, having the time of her life. So was Matt.

In fact, everybody was so happy, so full of bright chatter that she could have cheerfully strangled each and every one of them. Her sister, her fiancé, her nemesis. The Three Joke-ateers.

How did a person make jokes about prime rates and megabytes? What was so blasted hilarious about a customer calling the help line to say that his cup holder broke on his computer? Oh, wait. Joe had explained that one to her. The guy was using the CD receptacle tray for his coffee cup. Ha. Ha, ha, ha. This was what passed for computer humor?

Well, okay. So it was a little funny. Just a little. She'd even smiled, in spite of herself. She understood computers; she'd used one at college, used one now to keep track of her recipes, used the World Wide Web to visit a very good home gardening site.

But computers were like automobiles. At least to Maddy they were. As long as the thing moved when she wanted, took her where she wanted to go, she saw no need to know more about computers or cars than where to slide the floppy disk, where to insert the gas. What went on under the hood, or beneath the bright aqua plastic computer monitor—well, she really couldn't care less.

And as for federal interest rates, stocks and bonds, tax free municipal bonds? Double ha. She'd have as much luck trying to understand how to split the atom. And about as much interest in the subject.

Which made her—what? Not at all a proper wife for a software king? Not at all a proper wife for a banker?

Maddy sighed, wishing she'd ordered dessert. Maybe two desserts. And Irish coffee. Not for the liquor. For the whipped cream. In fact, another couple of meals like this one, and they could just
roll
her to the table and let her graze.

Maddy looked at her sister from beneath her eyelashes. Jessie was positively
blooming.
Both men were paying attention to her, nodding their agreement with her every statement, going out of their way to listen, to comment, to tell her without words that she was scintillating company.

While ignoring Maddy. How rude.

Okay, so Matt had asked her if her prime rib was done to her liking.

That was it.

And it was all Joe's fault, damn him. He was the one who kept asking questions, setting off into new areas of conversation—all of which interested Maddy so little that after a while she didn't even bother trying to keep up or add her own opinion.

And he'd done it on purpose. She could tell. She could read the man like a book with only two pages. The Table of Contents, and the only chapter:
Joe O'Malley, why he thinks everybody should love him.

Love him? She wanted to fricassee his liver. Pickle his kidneys. Slice his tongue, cold, for lunch.

And Matt was just as bad. Not that he was exactly
fawning
over Joe, but he certainly couldn't be nicer to the guy if he tried. All right, so Joe O'Malley was big news. Software genius and all of that. And probably with great big bags of money he might want to put into Matt's bank. So what?

Then there was her sister. Maddy's mind had to go back to Jessie, because Jessie was acting so strangely, so very much out of character, that she'd wondered if maybe someone had slipped a double shot of booze into her single vodka tonic. The giggling was one thing, but she was also touching her hair a lot, flipping it back behind her ears. Pressing her fingers against Joe's arm when she spoke to him; so very touchy-feely, which wasn't the usually controlled Jessie at all.

Maddy flagged down the waiter pushing the dessert cart around and selected a thin slice of sin described as Death By Chocolate Mud Pie. “And what a way to go,” the waiter said, winking at her as he placed the plate in front of her, then spooned a large
portion of freshly whipped cream beside the mud pie. “Enjoy.”

“Maddy,” Jessie said, her eyes wide as she looked at the plate. “Tell me you're not going to eat that.”

Maddy felt her temper, on simmer all evening, getting ready to come to a full boil.
Ignore me all through dinner, then just when I'm doing something I shouldn't, you notice me? Thanks a heap, sis.
“No, Jessie, I'm not going to eat this. I only ordered it so I'd have someone to talk to. First that nice waiter, and now you. See how it works?”

Matt slid his arm behind Maddy's back, resting it on the top of the leather chair. “I'm sorry, Maddy. We've been ignoring you, haven't we?”

Maddy put her fork into the pie, twisted it around, mashing the chocolate even smoother. “It's all right. It isn't every evening us small-town folk have a chance to talk with the great J. P. O'Malley.” She smiled at Joe across the table. “I guess I'm just not in the same league with Matt and Jessie, Joe. I'm much more interested in less exciting things, although I suppose talking about importing ladybugs to keep the insect population in my gardens down isn't really acceptable dinner table conversation.”

You used to listen to me for hours and ask damn intelligent questions,
Joe thought even as he smiled and apologized for excluding her from the conversation. “Personally,” he added, “I think ladybugs are cute. Remember that old rhyme? ‘Ladybug, ladybug, fly away home—'”

“‘Your house is on fire, your children will burn,'” Jessie finished for him. “I don't know. The whole thing seems fairly depressing to me. But,
then, most fairy tales are. I can remember staying up most of the night with bad dreams after my mother read me the story about the Three Pigs.”

“Who did you feel sorry for, Jessie?” Joe asked, slipping
his
hand behind
her
chair. “The piggies, or the wolf?”

“The wolf ended up coming down the chimney of the brick house and falling straight into the cook pot, right?” Maddy said before slipping her tongue out to lick a small dollop of whipped cream from her upper lip. “Seems a fitting end for a big, bad wolf.”

Joe grabbed the brass knob top of the chair back and squeezed, hard. She was deliberately driving him insane. “Remind me never to cross you, Maddy,” he said, winking at Matt. “You might want to remember that, too, Matt.”

“I'll be sure not to get too close to the stove,” Matt said, and everyone laughed. Again. Everyone but Maddy.

Wasn't this all just
so
wonderful? Now, instead of laughing and talking and excluding her, they were laughing and talking
about
her. Gee, if she had any more fun tonight, she might just have to call Matt's sister and get a prescription for megadoses of Prozac.

“I hate to break up what has been a…wonderful evening,” she said as Joe took a bite of lemon sherbet from the spoon Jessie offered him, “but Allie really wore me out today. I have a terrible headache.”

“And a hive on the side of your neck,” Joe supplied helpfully. “It's a good thing I reminded you to take a pass on wine, since it looks like you're
going to need some antihistamines, poor thing. You get these hives often?”

Only when you leave or come back into my life,
Maddy wanted to say, but didn't. “Mrs. Ballantine thinks I'm reacting to the stiff netting material in the slips I need to wear beneath my gown,” she said, her voice level, her green eyes shooting fire straight at Joe. “Nothing but a temporary annoyance. Nothing, in fact, that won't go away forever directly after the wedding next week.”

Matt signaled to their waiter that he wanted the check, then looked from his fiancée to Joe O'Malley, wondering just what he was missing. Because he was missing something, that was for sure. Maddy was never impolite, and he'd certainly never seen her in a sulk before tonight. He'd tried, half a dozen times or more, to draw her into the conversation, but she had slipped back into silence each time, after only a monosyllabic response.

Maybe she did have a headache. Or maybe she didn't like Joe O'Malley. Which was ridiculous. He was a nice guy. Open, funny, friendly. And he seemed to enjoy Jessie's company a lot. That was good. Jessie needed to get out more, to stop being so damn devoted to her work in the family clothing manufacturing business. The work, he'd decided, that was her life, her only real interest.

Matt wished he could have gotten to know Jessie better, but even though he'd initially been very attracted to her, he knew that they also had very different goals in life. Jessie wanted a career; he wanted a home, a family. Jessie was married to her career. And he was about to marry her sister.

“Come on, Maddy,” he said, standing up and
pulling out her chair after getting back his credit card from the waiter. “Let's get you and your headache home for a good night's sleep.”

“We'll drop you off,” Joe said, following them out of the restaurant, his right hand against Jessie's spine, guiding her along beside him. “Jessie and I are going to go back to my house for a while. She promised to help me arrange some furniture, didn't you, Jess?”

“Not
arrange,
Joe,” Jessie said, her head sort of light, a pleasant buzzing in her ears. She'd never liked vodka, but tonight the drink had gone down quite easily, and to some effect. “I'll suggest and point.
You'll
be moving the furniture.”

Everybody laughed. Ha. Ha, ha, ha.

Everybody but Maddy.

 

Joe wondered if he'd gone too far, pushed too hard. Maddy's little face had been white and pinched as he stood outside the car in front of the Chandler house and watched Matt walk her to the door.

Now, after taking Jessie home once they had actually arranged the living room furniture—Jessie having said something about not wanting to tell one more lie tonight—he found himself avoiding the white split rail fence and, instead, turning right, heading into the gardens behind the Chandler house.

He wasn't quite sure what he was doing. Maybe he just wanted to look up at the lights still burning on the third floor, moon around in the garden like some lovesick schoolboy hoping to catch a glimpse of his one true love.

Or maybe he wanted to find some small stones,
toss them up at the window, ask Maddy if she wanted to come out and play.

Or maybe he was just plain nuts.

He'd hurt Maddy tonight, and he'd known just what he was doing. That made him the louse her brother Ryan had called him. In spades.

It didn't matter how much he tried to tell himself he was doing all of this for Maddy's own good, that she'd never be happy married to Matthew Garvey.

Garvey was a good guy. A little stiff, slightly starchy, but a good guy. He did seem to genuinely care for Maddy.

But the guy wasn't hungry for her. He didn't look at her as if he might pick her up at any moment, toss her over his shoulder and take her somewhere to make love to her until they both were too exhausted to do more than curl up together and dream of each other.

Matthew Garvey didn't have that kind of passion in him. At least, he didn't seem to have it for Maddy. What he had for her, Joe had decided long before the salad course, was respect, admiration, a feeling of shared goals.

All that good stuff.

But without love? Without that grand passion? Without the heartbreaking, lifesaving passion, their lives would just be roles they played out, like
Ozzie and Harriet,
or those actors on
Father Knows Best.
Genuine liking, chaste kisses, twin beds, and vegetable soup for lunch.

How much better to be Lucy and Desi, he thought, keeping to his rather lame sitcom analogy. Lucy and Desi had
passion.
They fought, yes, but they loved. They really and truly
loved.

If Joe and Maddy married—
when
they married—theirs would be a Lucy and Desi marriage. Hot, spicy. Never dull. Always with the passion…the passion.

If Matt and Maddy married?

Vegetable soup.

“Okay, you've convinced yourself, O'Malley,” he said out loud. “Now convince her.”

“Who's out there?”

Damn.
Joe had been walking, and thinking. Not thinking about where he was walking. Certainly not too smart, either, speaking out loud as he had done. He lifted his head to realize that he had somehow come to be standing right outside the first-floor windows at the rear corner of the house, windows that allowed light to spill out onto the grounds, light that illuminated Maddy's body as she stood just outside a pair of opened French doors.

She was wearing soft blue cotton knit pajamas covered in a small riot of screen-printed, fluffy white Persian kittens. And she looked just as cuddly, with her hair falling loose around her shoulders, her red-tipped toenails peeking out from the too-long pajama trousers. Cat pajamas, and she looked sexy as hell. Go figure.

“Hi, babe.” Joe stepped out of the shadows into one long splash of light. “Would you believe I was out hunting ladybugs?” he offered, hands in his pockets as he shrugged his shoulders and tried to look innocent.

Maddy released a pent-up breath, shifted her weight onto one bare foot and jammed a fist against her hip. “You.”

Joe ducked his head as if avoiding an expected
slap, then walked closer. “You know, Mad, that's the third time you've greeted me that way.
You.
Yet each time it's been different. The first time, it was
you
—but sounded like
bastard.
The second time, it was
you
—but sounded more like
oh, no, not you.
Now, the third time, it sorta sounds like
oh, you. Figures.
I can't say I'm real flattered about any of those greetings.”