Tangled Thing Called Love (2 page)

Turning on the hot water, Mazie dumped half a bottle of shampoo into the tub, waited for the bubbles to froth, then climbed in. Oh, sheer, utter, celestial bliss! She worked the suds into her prickly scalp and sank back into the bubbles, tired to the bone. She’d been up since five this morning, when she’d boarded the Greyhound bus in Milwaukee for the two-hour haul to Madison. Then she’d had a three-hour layover before she’d caught the local Coulee County bus, whose route meandered through every town and rabbit hole in southwest Wisconsin before finally reaching Mazie’s hometown, Quail Hollow. Since neither bus line allowed animals, Mazie had smuggled Muffin aboard in her tote bag, sneaking him off when the bus boarded or unloaded passengers to find him a patch of grass to pee on.

Life had been loads simpler when she’d had a car, but her fourteen-year-old Escort had crashed off a cliff a few months ago and gone to car heaven. The insurance had been a pittance, and even working double shifts at a coffee shop hadn’t produced a big enough nest egg to pay for a replacement junker. Two weeks ago the coffee shop had suddenly folded, and now Mazie was living on her paltry savings while job-hunting in a market that didn’t value people with prison records. Before she’d gone to prison she’d taught high school music, but, though her murder conviction had been overturned and she’d regained her freedom, school boards weren’t exactly lining up to recruit ex-convicts.

Mazie had just turned on the hot water tap with her toes when the bathroom door crashed open and two boys barged into the room, raced to the toilet, and flung up the lid. They had their pants half-unzipped before they noticed there was someone in the tub. Abruptly they whipped around, eyes bugging out in surprise.

Hastily zipping back up, the taller boy demanded, “Who’re
you
?”

“Your aunt Mazie.” She was relieved that the soap bubbles covered her from the neck down. “So now I guess it’s your turn.”

“I’m Joey,” said the boy, who was skinny as a licorice whip, with dark hair and hazel eyes.

Mazie extended a soapy hand and they shook.

“Sam,” piped the other brother, thrusting out his hand, shaking, then wiping his wet hand on his pants. Sam was the younger twin by twenty minutes, with green eyes and coppery hair, built more along Maguire men lines: short and sturdy. The boys were fraternal twins, and although they didn’t look much alike, they shared the same double-dare-ya expressions. They were eight years old, going on nine. Mazie hadn’t seen them in four years, and neither boy seemed to remember her. They smelled like dirt, boy sweat, and—oddly—potatoes.

“You’re supposed to babysit us while Mama’s gone?” asked Sam.

“That’s the plan.”

A now-we-can-get-away-with-murder look passed between the boys, making Mazie’s scalp prickle. The boys’ mother, Emily, had been ordered to the hospital for total bed rest to await the birth of her baby. She’d asked Mazie to come to the farm for a few days to lend Gran a hand while she was gone. Before Emily had even finished asking,
Mazie had said yes, delighted at the chance to spend time with her grandmother and to get reacquainted with her nephews.

Besides, she needed to get away from the place where everything reminded her of
him
, the faithless jerk who’d treated her heart as if it were peanut brittle: made to be broken.

Muffin nosed into the bathroom and the boys went berserk. Love at first sight on all sides. More thrilled with the dog than with their aunt, they asked a million questions—what was his name, what kind was he, what did he eat, could he play dead, could he sleep with them, did he know how to play fetch—all the while tussling and rolling around on the floor with Muffin, who was gleefully barking, his tail going a thousand wags per second, and looking ready to piddle from sheer excitement.

“Can we take him outside to play?” Joey asked. Without waiting for an answer, he and Sam blew the joint, a small four-legged tornado, sucking up Muffin with them. He dashed off without a backward look at her.

“That’s just what I need,” Mazie yelled after him. “Another love ’em and leave ’em male.”

Chapter Three

Damn GPS.

They ought to slap a label on it, Ben Labeck thought.
Warning: use with extreme skepticism. May lead to stranding in rivers, swamps, or deserts
. The lady with the sexy Australian accent had gotten him from Milwaukee to Quail Hollow with no glitches, but after he’d left the town she’d directed him on a merry chase through country lanes and goat trails until he’d ended up where he was now: in the middle of a gravel pit.

This might be the GPS version of a prank, Ben thought. Maybe the GPS ladies got together late at night, slammed down boilermakers, and laughed until they drooled all over their bras, describing how they’d stranded their gullible drivers on railroad tracks or atop waterfalls.

How did the people around here ever find anything, he wondered. There were no street signs, and every barn and silo looked like every other barn and silo. His eyes burned with fatigue and his legs were cramped. He’d been on an early-morning flight from Los Angeles, which had arrived in Milwaukee at noon. Then he’d discovered that the object of his cross-country quest was in Quail Hollow, a two-hundred-mile drive away.

Shutting off the treacherous GPS, Ben reversed out of the gravel pit and turned onto a winding blacktop road, still without the faintest idea where he was. Well, this was it then—he had no choice. At some point in his life every man was forced to do it. He only hoped none of the guys he knew found out about it.

He would have to ask directions.

He chose a farm on the left, a white house with green trim at the end of a long, uphill driveway. He parked, got out, went up to the front door, and knocked.

A thin, white-haired woman with a mixing bowl in her hands came to the door. She had to be in her seventies, Ben guessed, but she was still very pretty, with bright eyes rayed with laugh lines and a warm smile.

“Hello there, young man—and what might you be selling?”

“I’m not selling anything,” Ben said, smiling back. “I was just hoping for
directions. Could you tell me how to find the Maguire farm?”

“You found it.”

“I—this is? Are you—”

“Too hot to stand out there. Come on in.”

Ben did, following her down a wide hallway and into a kitchen. It was twice the size of most modern kitchens, with old-fashioned glass-fronted cupboards, a large, round oak table with bow-backed chairs, and a modern refrigerator that looked spacious enough to hang a couple sides of beef.

The woman found a glass, filled it with cold tap water, and handed it to him. “You look like you could use this,” she said.

“Thank you.” He was about to introduce himself when the back door opened and Mazie Maguire walked in. Ben’s heart seized up before kicking back into gear and setting up a rapid thumping.

Mazie’s eyes met his and widened. They were an intense blue, framed by black lashes and brows. She didn’t look at all like the women Ben had met in L.A. She wasn’t tall, tanned, or surgically enhanced. Her chin was pointed, her skin was freckled, and she wasn’t wearing a speck of makeup. Her brown hair was tied back in a loose ponytail and must recently have been washed because he could smell her shampoo from across the room, a scent that made him go weak in the knees.

She wore ragged cutoff jeans, a sleeveless pink shirt, and was clutching a big bunch of dirt-encrusted radishes. She was barefoot, and even across the room Ben could see her nipples poking through the fabric of her shirt. No bra! The message shot straight from his brain to his gonads.

Mazie ran to him, jumped into his arms, wrapped her legs around him, kissed him openmouthed, and whispered that she couldn’t wait to go to bed with him.

That was the alternate reality version of events, the GPS prankster version.

What actually happened was that Mazie marched to the sink, flung down the radishes, turned her back on Ben, and said, “So what are you here for—did you forget your electric toothbrush or something?”

The elderly woman set down the bowl with a bang. “Marguerite Maguire—where are your manners? You obviously know this handsome young fellow, so introduce us.”

Mazie turned from the sink and with a sullen expression said, “Gran, this is my—this is Bonaparte Labeck. Ben, this is Katie Maguire, my grandmother.”

“Pleased to meet you.” Ben was grateful for the older woman’s understanding smile as they shook hands, feeling that she, at least, might be on his side.

“Why are you here? Why aren’t you in L.A.?” Mazie asked, her tone hostile.

Ben shrugged. “It didn’t work out.”

It didn’t work out
, Mazie thought bitterly. Did he think he could just reappear on her doorstep like one of those cats that found its way across seventeen states back to its owner and expect to be greeted with an open can of Friskies? Or in his case, with her open arms? Did he think they were just going to resume where they’d left off? Fat chance.

Against her will, she sneaked a sideways look at Ben Labeck. He was even taller than she remembered and darkly tanned—thanks to all that West Coast sunshine. He was wearing baggy cargo shorts and a short-sleeved white shirt that revealed his muscular forearms—probably he’d been working out at Muscle Beach, doing push-ups while bikini-clad starlets clung to him like barnacles.

She tried not to notice his strong jaw, his wide, full mouth, his broad black eyebrows, or his devastating brown eyes. Which absolutely were not going to devastate her again, because she was immune to his magic now. Picking up a vegetable brush, Mazie began savagely scrubbing dirt off the radishes.

Uninvited, Ben moved next to her at the sink. “Would you like some help?”

“No.”

Then—this was classic Labeck—he simply ignored her
no
, picked up a paring knife, and started chopping off the tops of the cleaned radishes with those large, competent hands of his.

She was not going to think about how those large hands felt on her body. She was not going to notice the rumbling timbre of his voice or his smell—sort of like cinnamon coffee cake. She scrubbed furiously at the radishes, wishing she could scrub away the memories: the time they’d started building a snow fort and kisses in the snow had escalated into a passionate encounter that gave a whole new meaning to “Winter Wonderland.” She still had an icy spot on her backside that hadn’t quite thawed out. Or the time they’d body-surfed in Lake Michigan with Ben as her boogie board. Or the pillow fight that had resulted
in a blizzard of feathers all over Ben’s bedroom floating down while he was making love to her.

She wasn’t going to think about the way he cracked up when she tried to speak French or how she nearly wet her pants laughing when Ben, who couldn’t carry a tune in a tote bucket, tried to do karaoke singing. Or how he rubbed her back when she got her period. Or how he’d bought her a starfish-shaped piñata stuffed with tiny oranges and chocolates when she was in bed with the flu.

In fact, she didn’t want to dredge up any memories at all that involved
beds
.

The twins clattered into the house, yelling something about needing potatoes. They skidded to a halt when they saw Labeck.

“Who’s
he
?” Sam asked.

“Wipe your feet,” Gran said. “And mind your manners. Now come over here and meet your aunt’s gentleman caller.”

Gentleman caller
. The expression almost made Mazie smile, but then she saw that Labeck was smiling, and stopped herself.

Cautiously the boys approached Ben. When he offered his hand they both shook it, mumbling their names, then Sam asked, “How tall are you?”

“Six two. And a half.”

“You’ve got a funny nose,” observed Joey, Mr. Tact.

“My own fault,” Ben said. “Never raise your face mask when there’s a hockey puck around.”

“Are you Aunt Mazie’s boyfriend?” Sam asked.

“No,” Mazie said.

“Yes,” Ben said. “Although she doesn’t seem to realize it.”

Outside, a truck door slammed. The boys rushed out of the house, and Mazie could hear their excited voices talking to their dad.

“We’ve got a dog named Muffin.”

“And this tall guy with a funny nose came.”

“We shot a potato fifteen feet!”

“Oh, and Aunt Mazie’s here.”

The boys’ dad was Mazie’s older brother, Brendan Scully Maguire, better known as
Scully. He entered the kitchen via the back porch, carefully wiping his feet because nobody dared get dirt on a kitchen floor when Gran was around.

“Sis,” he said, coming up and giving Mazie a bear hug and a smacking kiss on the cheek. “It’s been way too long.”

“How’s Emily?”

“She’s good. She needed the bed rest.” Scully cut his eyes meaningfully toward the twins. “If you know what I mean.” Then Scully turned to Ben.

She supposed there was nothing for it; she’d have to introduce them. “Scully Maguire,” Mazie said, “this is Ben Labeck.” Let Scully figure out their relationship for himself. Hopefully, he’d pull his overprotective-big-brother act and order Ben off the premises.

The two men shook. They were an interesting contrast: Scully short and stocky, with the Maguire red hair, freckles, and permanently windburned skin. A lifetime of physical work had left him hard as an ironwood stump, with deep weather lines in his face. He wore a DeKalb Seed Corn cap, a faded denim shirt, and faded jeans with rolled-up cuffs.

Labeck was built rangier, with long arms and legs, wide shoulders and narrow hips. Like Mazie, he was thirty years old. The men took each other’s measure as they shook. Apparently Labeck passed some kind of test whose rules were only understood by males, because the first thing out of Scully’s mouth was an insult, which was his stamp of approval.

“You don’t look like as big a dope as what Mazie usually drags home,” he said.

Ben nodded. “Good to hear.”

“So you helping us out here for the week, too?” Scully asked.

“No,” Mazie said promptly.

“Of course he’s staying,” Gran said. “I’ll get the guest room ready. And I’ll need help, Mazie, what with your gentleman caller staying for supper.”