The Things We Do for Love (16 page)

“Mom, you go, too,” Mary Anne urged.

“Oh—shouldn’t I be here for Louise?”

“Graham and I will entertain them till you get back.”

“All right, then.”

The dog walkers began pulling on coats, Katie Drew saying, “I wish you’d quit those things, Caroline. They’re so bad for you.”

Graham followed Mary Anne into the kitchen and asked Lucille, “How can we help? Set the table?”

“You absolutely may not set the table, Mr. Graham, or do one other little thing.”

Graham grinned.

“And that counts for you, too, Miss Mary Anne,” added Lucille. “You two go sit in the living room so you hear Miss Cameron when she arrives.”

As they wandered back toward the living room, Mary Anne said, “As if she isn’t going to insist on getting the door, too.”

“She’s a lovely person,” Graham said.

“I think so, too. I just love her. When I was little, she would put
extra
butter in the brownies. It’s been hard talking her out of that in the interest of remaining halfway svelte.”

Graham teased, “I like how she manages you. I’m watching carefully and taking notes.”

Mary Anne glanced at him in surprise. How could he want anything to do with her after her family’s displays of the past twenty-four hours? She said, “You mean you’re not scared off by a dysfunctional family of origin?”

He smiled at her and said, “They’re very nice, Mary Anne.”

What manners, was all she could think.

Taking advantage of a breather before the next bit of drama, she sank down on the couch and exhaled, relaxing every muscle in her body.

Ruefully, Mary Anne recalled the one time a man
had
asked her to marry him. A man who had never met her parents, her aunt or her grandmother. When Mary Anne had learned of dubious behavior on his part, regarding his parents’ finances, she had broken the engagement. The
incident had left her wondering if she was only capable of securing someone defective; if men could somehow
sense
that she came from a screwy family and if they gave her what they thought she deserved.

She tried to make a joke. “Did he sing ‘Dark as a Dungeon’ on the way home last night?”

Graham shook his head, smiling fondly and, he hoped, sympathetically.

“How did he get there, anyway?” she asked.

“What I picked up when we got back here,” he said, “is that he set out for a solo walk and didn’t return and everyone guessed he’d gone to a bar.”

Mary Anne stirred at the sound of an automobile on the street. She peered out the window to see the taillights of a large sedan that was pulling up to the curb. “That will be Cameron and Aunt Louise.”

And Cameron was mad at her. And she was a little mad at Cameron for involving her with the Cureux family.

Mary Anne beat Lucille to the door by two steps. She welcomed Cameron and her mother into the foyer, helping her aunt off with her coat as Cameron brandished a rolled-up magazine. “A present for you, Mary Anne. From Paul. He says he’s going to recommend his mother use it for advertising.”

Mary Anne held a finger to her lips and mouthed, “No! No!”

A look of incredulity crossed Cameron’s face. Casually, she glanced into the living room and waved to Graham.

To Mary Anne, it all seemed dreadfully obvious and damning.

“Well, here.” Cameron thrust the magazine into Mary Anne’s hands.

It was the weekly entertainment news magazine
Fly
. “Why is it called that?” she asked Cameron.

“Fly,” Cameron said. “You know, like they used to say in England during the Napoleonic Wars. It means, like, really good in every way. I dog-eared the page. Graham can see it, too.”

Mary Anne opened the magazine and saw the photo the
Logan Standard
junior reporter had snapped of her and Graham on their evening out.

Horror washed over her. Graham looked handsome, like a movie star. Her hips looked like something that should be labeled Wide Load. The worst thing was the caption.
Dr. Graham Corbett steps out with Jon Clive Drew’s daughter, Mary Anne.

She wanted to sit down.

Cameron grabbed the magazine from her hand and took it into the living room.

Mary Anne felt as if she’d been photographed walking down the street in her nightgown. It was in no sense a rational reaction and had everything to do with the tabloid features involving her father she’d come across when she was young.

She followed her cousin into the living room, walked to the sideboard and poured herself a glass of wine.

Graham said, “You’re photogenic, Mary Anne.”

“You want some wine?” she answered without enthusiasm.

“I’m fine.”

Lucille popped into the living room and said she was brewing “a nice pot of tea,” then continued to offer various refreshments.

Aunt Louise said, “Is Caroline out smoking?”

“Walking Paris with my parents.” Mary Anne looked uneasily at Cameron, who was prowling the living room looking irritable.

Soon Aunt Louise and Graham were talking about Graham’s mother’s books, a discussion that continued as the others returned from dog-walking. Aunt Louise called out, “Caroline, did you know Graham’s mother is Evelyn Corbett?”

“Yes, I told him
Sultry Southern Custom
is my favorite!” Aunt Caroline exclaimed.

Mary Anne’s mother looked shocked. “It sounds terrible,” she murmured audibly.

Louise, falling into family step, said, “Well, our mother won’t read anything like that.”

Mary Anne was certain that Aunt Caroline had mentioned that very title so as to provoke a reaction from her sisters. She seemed to sometimes enjoy making them appear gauche.

Mary Anne managed to say, “I’m sure we all agree that it’s an amazing feat to have become such a well-known and much-loved author.”

Her mother took her cue at once and said, “It certainly is.”

“Graham’s working on a book, too,” Mary Anne said, though he had only spoken of it once in her presence—to Jonathan. “It’s sort of like his show, I guess. Self-help. And he helps a lot of people,” she added with a meaningful look at her mother.

Which was the cue for her father, who’d been hanging up his coat, to enter the room and say, “Cameron McAllister, look at you. My niece is a
fox
.”

Mary Anne considered simply walking out of the house and never returning.

Jon Clive waved to Louise, saying, “No Skip?”

“He’s got a meeting tonight.”

Mary Anne’s father helped himself to another drink, saying, “Graham, can I tempt you?”

“Not just now, thanks.”

Cameron leaped up from the couch. “Ready to open a present, Aunt Caroline?”

“I’m always ready for that, chicken.” Aunt Caroline laughed. “I don’t want to interfere with Lucille’s plans, though.”

Mary Anne said, “I’ll ask when we’re eating.” While she was in the kitchen, maybe she could put her head in the oven. She ducked through the dining room to the kitchen, where she let out a long breath.

Lucille saw her face and said, “Miss Mary Anne, nothing any other person on earth does can reflect on you. You’re the only one who can do that.”

Mary Anne came over to the black woman and clung to her for a moment. Lucille was almost as tall as she was. Mary Anne was so grateful for her voice of sanity in this time of chaos.

Lucille said, “Now, your aunt’s going to want a bottle of wine on the table. She already said so.”

Mary Anne had overheard Aunt Caroline saying so. Lucille, I’m not going to let that man’s bad behavior ruin my birthday. Nobody will keep him away from the side board anyhow.

“When shall we eat?” Mary Anne asked.

“Fifteen minutes, if that works for everyone.”

“Thank you so much, Lucille. Won’t you let me do
anything?
”

“You know better than to ask that, Miss Mary Anne.”

Mary Anne returned to the living room, where Aunt Caroline sat unwrapping the gift Cameron and Aunt Louise had brought. It turned out to be a gorgeous silver bowl. “How
beautiful!
” Aunt Caroline exclaimed. “You shouldn’t have, but I am
so glad
you did.”

Mary Anne smiled, thinking of her own gift for her aunt, the scarf that had been gift-wrapped by Angie Workman, sitting in its box on a side table in the dining room.

Mary Anne told everyone when dinner would be served and Aunt Caroline opened another present, this one from Mary Anne’s parents. It was a white cotton sweater, very nice, well-suited to Caroline’s style. Lucille came out to announce dinner, and Mary Anne and the others trailed into the dining room, where an extra leaf had been added to the table to accommodate the crowd. Her father brought his whiskey glass with him, and Mary Anne wondered why Lucille had bothered to mention the wine, which was now breathing on the table. As Lucille served the ham, Louise said, “Caroline, you know who I saw yesterday? Dean Milligan! Remember that night we all went to the drive-in to see
Jaws?
”

“I remember that,” said Mary Anne’s father. “You were wearing that green sweater, Caroline, and hip-huggers, the first time they came around, and, boy, did you have the hips for them.”

“You weren’t there, Jon Clive,” said Louise, frowning. “Were you?”

Mary Anne realized this was probably a date her father
had gone on with her aunt before he switched to her mother. She barely stopped herself from rolling her eyes.

“I never saw that movie,” Katherine Drew said. “Mother didn’t approve of it. I remember that.”

Aunt Caroline said, “Graham, are you going to pour that wine for us?”

“I am,” Graham said swiftly, standing up to do so.

Louise said, “I’m so silly, Caroline. It was Sue Lane who went with us. I don’t know why I thought it was you.”

“Probably,” Mary Anne said, “because she went out with my father before my mother did.” She smiled at Graham as she said this.

“Well, I’m surprised Louise went to that movie!” her mother exclaimed. “Knowing how Mother felt about it.”

Across the table, Cameron uncapped a small vial and added the clear contents to her own wineglass, then picked up the glass and drank.

Mary Anne’s mouth fell open, and it was all she could do not to shout out, “What are you doing?”

Because the vial was identical to the one Clare Cureux had given her, the vial containing the love potion.

M
ARY
A
NNE FOLLOWED
her cousin to the bathroom fifteen minutes later, pushing her way into the tiny powder room with Cameron. “What was that—the vial? At dinner?”

Cameron tossed her long braids and shrugged. “Not a love potion. Don’t worry. I asked Bridget for something to help me realign emotionally.”

“What do you mean?” Mary Anne gazed into her cousin’s dark eyes, feeling terrible for the pain she saw there.

“You’re going to end up with Graham,” Cameron said. “And it’s
okay
. It’s really okay. He has never been interested in me. But Bridget just brewed up something to help me adjust, to help me come back to myself emotionally.”

“I wouldn’t drink anything anyone in that family gave me,” Mary Anne said, suddenly thinking it had been a terrible thing to plan to give a man a love potion. “I wouldn’t do business with them, especially not with
her.
Don’t you think she’ll tell everyone all about it?”

“Actually, no,” Cameron answered. “We discussed it all. I was mad at her for what she said to Elinor and I told her so, told her everything I thought. She said I was right and apologized. She
admitted culpability.
She’s really not so bad.”

“So, does she supposedly have her mother’s supposed powers?”

“Oh, yes. Even Paul admits that she does. He just says she shouldn’t use them.”

Mary Anne sighed and abruptly put her arms around her much smaller cousin. “I’m sorry, Cameron. I’m sorry for everything.”

“Hell, Mary Anne, it doesn’t matter.” Cameron turned away for a moment, but Mary Anne knew it was to hide tears. “This thing with Graham. I mean,
you’re
my best friend. Like I’m going to get along without you. Give me a break.”

Mary Anne returned to the table acutely thankful for the love of her cousin. Cameron’s nature was forgiving.
I hope she gets over Graham fast.

Strangely, their brief conversation had made her feel free, and she found herself looking across the table at Graham with new eyes.

But he’s a celebrity, Mary Anne. You’re in that stupid magazine together.

But what had they been doing? Going on a date. No setting fire to bars, no epic car chases, no drunken scenes with multiple strippers.

I can live with it,
she thought, watching Graham converse with her mother about her job as church secretary. Everything was changing. She realized abruptly that she was not in love with Jonathan Hale and didn’t care if they ever had another date.

The person she cared about was Graham Corbett.

A
FTER DESSERT
, as they sat in the living room with Cameron and Aunt Caroline, Graham said, “Mary Anne, this
is going to sound silly, but I was hoping you’d come over and look at some furniture catalogs with me. My mother’s coming for Thanksgiving, and I need to pick out some things for the guest room.”

Cameron, who had been steadily consuming merlot on top of Bridget’s love cure, said, “You don’t have an insect collection you want her to see?”

Mary Anne couldn’t help it. She burst out laughing. So did Graham.

Aunt Caroline just shook her head and grabbed her cigarettes, perhaps planning to step outside.

Mary Anne said, “I’d love to help you pick out furniture, Graham.”

Cameron pulled out her cell phone, which had been vibrating in her pocket, and answered it. After initial greetings, Mary Anne heard her say, “Paul, I don’t
want
to be a groupie tonight. Just tell her you have a girlfriend, and she’ll go away. Anyhow, I can’t drive. I’m too drunk.” A sigh. “Jake is coming to get me? Oh, God. Tell him I’ll meet him at the bridge.”

Apparently, Cameron couldn’t stand the thought of family introductions.

“You’re going to owe me
big
-time,” Cameron told her non-boyfriend.

Graham stood and lifted his eyebrows, tilting his head toward the foyer.

“O
H, THANK
G
OD
,” Mary Anne said when they hit the street. “And thank
you.
”

He smiled. “I spent a good bit of time coming up with a pretext to get you over to my house, though your cousin saw right through it.”

“She’s very perceptive.”

“With all your family at your grandmother’s house, I figured this was the time to tempt you with the peace of my place. Maybe I can dissuade you from going back.”

Mary Anne laughed and also felt a delicious tingling in her stomach, spreading through her whole body. She glanced up at Graham in the streetlight, to try to gauge how serious he was.

Just flirting, she decided. But she said, “It was kind of you to take my father home last night.”

“I enjoyed his company,” Graham told her.

That couldn’t be true, but Mary Anne appreciated the words.

He said, “There’s a concert next weekend in Charleston. A little-known blues artist, but I’ve heard him before and I like him. Interested?”

“I’d like that. Thank you.” Obviously he realized that she and Jonathan were
not
seeing each other, not in the exclusive way Jonathan had implied.

“Good,” Graham answered. “I’m glad I didn’t have to foist the tickets on someone else.”

He glanced over at her, loving her profile, wanting to touch those thick, dark eyebrows and eyelashes, her full upper lip. In a back corner of his mind, he thought of Briony and what had happened to him after her death. Surely he could have a few dates with Mary Anne without falling head over heels in love with her. Attachment to her didn’t have to be as strong as it had been between him and his wife.

Mary Anne laughed suddenly, and he looked at her.

She said, “I can’t
wait
till they all go home.”

“Your family?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve got a place you can stay,” he offered with a grin.

“That would probably cause a family crisis.”

They both laughed, and as they walked up the front steps Graham said, “Care for coffee or something stronger while we pore over those furniture catalogs?”

Mary Anne asked, “
Are
there furniture catalogs?”

“Of course, but if you’d rather let me beat you at chess again…”

“I’m a world champion furniture shopper,” Mary Anne replied.

H
E REALLY DID HAVE
a spare room that he wanted to furnish for his mother’s visit. There were already filmy white curtains covering insulated blinds. There was also a single bed covered only with a mattress pad, about which Graham said, “This is going to charity. David Cureux has already asked me if I had anything to donate.”

“He’s a nice man,” Mary Anne remarked, flipping through one of the catalogs they’d brought upstairs.

Graham sat down on the bed beside her, right next to her, and looked at her curiously. “So tell me all about this love potion. Is it a figment of Elinor Sweet’s imagination?”

The tension the topic produced warred with the effect of his closeness.
How did I ever fail to notice how sexy this man is?
She hardly knew how to answer.

How about the truth, Mary Anne?

She took the general tack she had taken with Jonathan. “There
was
a love potion. It was something Cameron and I did just for fun. But I
didn’t
give it to Jonathan Hale.”

“Did you give it to someone else?”

Mary Anne silently gave thanks for how he’d phrased
the question. She
hadn’t
given him the love potion. He’d seized it. “No, I didn’t.”

“What did you do with it?”

She closed her mouth, considered. “There was an accident.” She looked up at him and made herself grin. “I promise I will tell you about it someday.”

“Someday?” He seemed delighted with this answer, and abruptly he brought his mouth near hers and kissed her lips.

Everything warm and wanting surged through her, as if a tide within her swept toward him, unstoppable. It felt so good to kiss him.

When he pulled away, pulled just two inches away, it was to say, “I’ve been wanting to do that for ages.”

“Ages?” she asked skeptically.

“Probably since I first laid eyes on you. Though I argued with myself about it for a long time.”

“Why?”

“It was pretty obvious you didn’t like me and that you were hot for Hale.”

She blushed. “You’re not the first person to observe that last part.” She was unaccountably nervous, but also extremely attracted to him. She found herself saying, “You know, I never even knew you’d been married until that night you came over.”

He said nothing, and Mary Anne looked into his brown eyes. He seemed on the verge of speaking.

When he said nothing, she told him, “Jonathan said you went through a bad time after your wife died.”

Graham nodded, biting his bottom lip. “Yes. It was the worst thing that had ever happened to me. Not just her dying. But afterward. I almost destroyed my life. I believed nothing mattered and I acted that way.” He stared
into space as he said, “Sometimes you have to almost lose everything you have to learn what it’s worth.”

“I hope I never have to find out that way,” Mary Anne told him.

“Is there a chance in the world,” he said, “that I could talk you into spending the night?”

Mary Anne knew the answer, knew it in her soul. Strangely, the short time she’d spent dating Graham had begun to feel like the most mature relationship of her life so far. And the best.

I
N THE MOONLIGHT
, Graham watched her sleep. God, she was beautiful. He’d been unprepared for the impact of those eyes of hers on his as they made love. It was as if they were seeing inside each other.

He
was
in love with her. He hadn’t wanted to be, hadn’t wanted to love any woman this way. It felt more overwhelming than anything he’d known with Briony, which now felt like a lifetime ago.

I can’t be with her. This isn’t the time.

Part of him knew that the excuse was just an excuse, that what he suddenly felt for this woman was overwhelming, severing him from his sense of himself, already changing him.

He had to sleep, and he deliberately turned away from her. No more flirting. No more dates.

But the show…He had to see her on the show.

What of it, Graham? That’s your job. You always focus on the listeners. You can handle it.

In the dark, he frowned, remembering Elinor Sweet, her call about love potions and everything she’d said to Mary Anne at Giuseppi’s. But Jonathan hadn’t drunk the
potion and Mary Anne hadn’t given it to anyone else. What had she said? There was an accident.

As if in slow motion, a memory came to him. Jonathan Hale’s engagement party. A broken wineglass—he’d drunk from the top half.

Ridiculous.
He
hadn’t been dosed with a love potion, and he’d never believe such a thing could work.

But
was
that the accident? Graham tried to remember what had happened that night. Mary Anne had gone to get a refill for Hale, hadn’t she? It had irritated him, which was why he’d teased her…

Well, if he
had
gotten the love potion, that was mildly interesting but nothing more. He’d been attracted to her from the first, though disdainful that she liked Hale. He’d never planned to get involved with her.

And he’d never, ever planned for things to go this far, but it was as if he couldn’t stop himself.

Why had he slept with her? He was interested—hell, more than interested. But he’d told himself that it wouldn’t change things that much. That everything would be fine.

Yet suddenly, he felt as if he was losing his moorings.

Okay, they’d made love this once. And he’d have to communicate with her.

And what are you going to say, Graham, that won’t hurt her? “This is all going a little fast for me?”
He was the one who’d asked her to stay the night. He was the one with the problem of suddenly wanting her beside him every night of their lives.

The truth would make no sense to her. But it made sense to him. He was in love with her, yes. But he loved his life more and wouldn’t risk everything he’d so carefully rebuilt.

M
ARY
A
NNE WALKED
home slowly the next morning, puzzling over Graham’s behavior. After acting madly in love with her the night before, he suddenly seemed aloof. Affectionate, yes, but also aloof.

He’d seemed…Last night, she’d thought he was actually in love with her. And she had felt crazy about him. But this morning had suggested to her that she was rushing things in her own mind. She
wanted
him to be in love with her, so maybe she’d imagined him to be so.

At one point, she’d almost asked him if everything was all right, but even in her mind there’d been a desperation to those words.

You’re just rushing things, Mary Anne. You spent the night together and it meant something to you, but it didn’t mean the same thing to him.

She climbed the steps to her grandmother’s house and unlocked the front door. As she did so, her mother came into the foyer, smiling nervously but also wringing her hands.

“Hi, Mom,” Mary Anne said, her smile feeling a little sick. She knew what was coming, and she just could not deal with it right now. If she’d come home certain of Graham’s love, she could have greeted her family with enthusiasm and cast off whatever her mother threw at her in the way of admonitions. Now, the thought of even
hearing
what her mother had to say exhausted her.

She was tired of pretending that life was as squeaky clean as a 1940s romance novel. She was tired of pretending that she never kissed men, let alone slept with them.