A Charmed Place (25 page)

The hot, quick slide of his flesh back and forth against hers brought him to a new and deeper level of passion. This time, he wanted nothing but to see Maddie satisfied. He made a crazy vow never again to come before she did, because he was crazy in love with her.

He felt her breath grow short and ragged, heard her moan become a series of whimpers, tasted her tears on his lips. He felt her body shudder beneath his. He felt himself go over the edge, and then he felt... stillness, a dreamy, tender stillness between them. After all those years... stillness. At last.

****

After a long, long while, Maddie sighed and rubbed her cheek against his hair, wiping away the last cool trail of her tears.

Crying
... she'd been crying. The thought of tears at a time like this astonished her, until she remembered that she almost never cried when she was unhappy. She mostly cried from joy.

She sighed again, content in her love for him. Dan heard the sigh. Nuzzling her on her neck, he said, "I'm heavier than I was twenty years ago."

"Not much," she said, but he rolled onto his side anyway.

She let out a moan of protest and kept her arms around him, afraid to let him leave her embrace. She'd flung him away once, and had paid dearly for the mistake.

"I love you," she whispered. "I love you."

He stroked her hair away from her face and said simply, "You are my life."

Overhead a gull screeched out a warning:
dawn, dummies! Dawn!

"It's getting light out," Maddie said, acknowledging the obvious at last.

Dan's voice was wistful: "I guess we can't just stay here?"

She laughed and said, "Not without bottoms on." She sighed, wistful herself, and began the process of brushing sand from her skin.

"Wait," he said, laying his hand on her wrist. "I have a better idea. We can rinse off in the sea."

Maddie smiled and shook her head. "Only in the movies, I'm afraid. In real life someone's bound to come along walking a dog."

"Okay, here's a concession: we keep our sweatshirts on. No one will suspect a thing. And anyway, who'd be out at this hour of the morning?"

A man and a dog, a woman and two dogs, a man running, another man running, and—amazingly—a woman on horseback, that's who. The beach had turned into Grand Central Station. Every time Maddie and Dan began wading back out of the water, Maddie would spy another body on the horizon. By the time the coast had cleared enough for them to make a run for their clothes, they had goosebumps on their goosebumps.

"Geez, doesn't anyone sleep in anymore?" Dan asked while they dressed in record time.

"Can you believe it? I'm so cold," Maddie confessed, "and suddenly exhausted."

Dan wrapped her in a warming hug and murmured in her ear, "Come back to the lighthouse with me, then. We'll huddle there together. Maybe take a nap. Eventually."

Maddie closed her eyes and imagined the two of them holed up in the lighthouse, making love, sleeping, making love again. It sounded like paradise, a dream come true.

But a dream, nonetheless. Maybe Dan could live the life he'd lived twenty years earlier, but that luxury was no longer an option for Maddie. She had a family. She had commitments. For all she knew, her mother was on the phone with the police at that very moment, reporting an abduction.

"It sounds like heaven," she said, holding him tightly around his waist. "But I can't just run away from home. It doesn't work that way."

Dan sighed and said, "Go, then, though I hate to have you leave my sight. Shower and we'll go somewhere for a meal. I'll pick you up—when?"

"Maybe the best thing is to take separate cars," Maddie murmured, unable to look him in the eye as she said it.

He understood. "Your mother's on to me," he said without a smile.

"Well, what do you expec
t? She never did like that Har
ley," Maddie said, trying to keep it light.

He surprised her by staying serious. "What did she say?"

"Oh, you know mothers: they don't say anything; they just give you that look."

"What did she say, Maddie?"

"Well
... she seemed
... surprised
... that you would want to take up with me again."

He smiled wryly. "She thinks I'm a cur."

"Something like that."

"
Damn
."

"Oh, don't be shocked, Dan, please don't be shocked," Maddie said, taking his hands in hers and bringing them up to her breast. "My mother is still in agony over my father. She's doing exactly what I did; she's taking out his murder on you. She's frustrated
... angry
... grieving. She wants to put the blame on someone. She wants closure, and you're a convenient scapegoat. Trust me on this: I know exactly how her mind is working. Her mind is being led around by her heart, and her heart is bitter right now."

Maddie blinked. She'd formed the theory on the spot, but now that she'd said it, it made a sad kind of sense. She added softly, "Every murderer is really a serial killer, isn't he? When he takes a life, he destroys a whole string of other lives. I'd give anything to know who killed my father."

Dan wrapped his arms around her and whispered, "I know, Maddie." He became quiet after that, lost in his own thoughts.

"I'm sorry," she said in a voice muffled by his shoulder.

"I didn't mean for it to finish up like this. We had such an incredible, wonderful experience
... that's what I want to take back with me. That's what I want in my heart right now. You."

"Maddie
... love of my life. If you had any idea
..." He kissed her again, a profoundly tender kiss that left her in awe. All those years. He'd remained committed to her all those years.

They parted reluctantly, but with the reassuring thought that they'd be together again in a couple of hours. Maddie made her way back to
Rosedale
cottage with every hope that their escapade would go undiscovered.

She lucked out. Her mother, never an early riser, was still asleep, and so, of course, was Tracey. George liked to get up early, but not on the
Cape
. Maddie's own door was as she left it: closed.

Once inside the sanctuary of her bedroom, she set the alarm for nine, then fell on her bed as she was and dropped into an immediate, deep sleep. Deep, but brief. The brutal ringing of the wind-up clock would've made her downright vicious if it weren't for the fact that she was so much in love. Tired but almost mystically happy, Maddie showered, changed into a yellow top and a denim skirt, and went to the kitchen in search of caffeine. In two short hours, she'd be back with her lover.

Lover.
The word was so joyously inadequate to describe what Dan meant to
her
. Her life just then was a fairy tale, her sense of malaise, a vague memory. Had she really once been worried and unhappy? It seemed so hard to believe. She had a smile on her face that stayed there through her brother's dry greeting.

"You seem pretty cheerful for someone who didn't get to bed until three," said George pointedly, heading for the fridge to pour himself some orange juice.

Not a clue, then. Excellent!

Grinning, Maddie said to
her brother, "We raised ninety-
two thousand dollars last night. Isn't that great?" It was a perfectly valid—and true—reason for being happy.

"What a waste of money," George muttered. He stood in front of the open door of the fridge and emptied his glass in one swig, then refilled it from the juice carton. "You know, you might think about making friends with women who have more in common with you," he added in his toast-dry voice. It was no secret that he considered Norah vulgar and Joan much too downscale.

Maddie smiled and touched a finger to her brother's chin. "You missed a spot shaving. And you just dribbled OJ on your shirt."

George looked down his nose at the cream-colored polo shirt and swore. "I'm teeing off in twelve minutes!"

"Most people won't even notice it," Maddie said generously.

He was already on his way back up the stairs. Maddie caught the words "lunch" and "client" thrown over his shoulder.

In other words, George had no time either to lecture her or to deliver a third degree.

Yes! She was on a roll!

Maddie cleaned up the kitchen during her first cup of coffee, and explained the lighthouse project to Claire during her second. By then it was after ten and her mother still hadn't emerged from the downstairs bedroom. Since Sarah hadn't slept well, it wasn't surprising, but Maddie found herself hovering at the door to her mother's room, more worried than not. She gave in to her impulse and eased the door open, just to be sure.

Her mother was asleep, obviously exhausted. She was lying on her back, her mouth slightly ajar. The reassuring sound of her light snoring was tempered by the sight of a bottle of her sleeping pills on the bedstand: Sarah, proud and conservative, had come to rely on sedatives since the death of her husband.

Maddie watched her mother sigh and roll over onto her side, a hint of a smile hovering on her lips. Was she dreaming of her beloved Edward? Maddie hoped so. Leaving her mother in peace, she closed the door silently and went upstairs to Tracey's room.

There, she had better luck. Tracey had showered and was towel-drying her long hair. Mother and daughter exchanged glances in the walnut-framed mirror above Tracey's bureau: appraising glances, on both sides.

Maddie said, "Mind if I come in?"

"Mom! Why would I mind?"

This was new. Bemused, Maddie said, "I guess I got the wrong idea from your 'Keep out!!!' sign underlined three times."

"Oh, that," Tracey said breezily. "I forgot it was hanging." She began untangling her hair with a styling brush, scrunching her face with every pull.

"Here, let me do that," Maddie said, longing for physical contact with her only child. "Did you use conditioner?"

"I'm out."

Which meant she'd refused to use her mother's conditioner. Which meant she'd still been sulking as recently as ten minutes ago. So why the turnaround?

"Your dad was going to stop by last night," Maddie said offhandedly. "Was he able to make it?"

"Uh-huh."

"Well
... good." Maddie worked at the tangles with short, businesslike jabs as she searched for a way to find out whether Michael had tried to poison Tracey's mind against Dan. He could be so very good at things like that.

But Tracey seemed to have an agenda of her own. "Mom, I wanted to ask you
... you know how Grandma always talks about your first job, the one walking dogs? If I wanted to do something like that instead of babysitting, that'd be okay, wouldn't it?"

"Well, it's harder work, certainly, and I'm not sure you'd be all that thrilled about the cleaning up part. But if you really were willing to line up the business and follow through on it," Maddie said, fanning her daughter's hair, "I don't see why not."

"
Well, maybe not exactly walking dogs, but something like that."

"What, for example?"

Tracey shrugged as she took her brush back. "I don't know."

Mystified, Maddie said, "When you've thought your plan through a little more, we certainly can talk about it."

"Promise?" Tracey's eyes were shining with anticipation, as if all that remained were to cash her first check.

Maddie smiled and said, "Sure."

A wide grin lit up the girl's face, hinting at the beauty that one day would come. Her next words were music to Maddie's ears.

"What's for breakfast, Mom? I'm starved!"

****

Maddie turned out bacon and waffles for Tracey and left some extra warming in the oven for her mother. She knew that they wouldn't get eaten, since her mother had a lunch date with her old friend Lillian. The waffles were a peace offering, pure and simple.

Stepping outside into brilliant sun, Maddie aimed her Taurus in the direction of
Harwich
Port
, where she planned to have a long, leisurely lunch with Dan.
Chatham
was prettier, but
Chatham
was farther. They wouldn't be that interested in the view anyway.

Still, Maddie was aware that the blue, white-capped water of Nantucket Sound looked especially glorious. It was a perfect summer's day, bright and dry, with a stiff breeze from the west. A dozen sailboats dotted the horizon, helmed by sailors with places to see and currents to catch.

She and Dan would have to get their hands on a sailboat of some kind. Nothing big, just a daysailer to go bopping around the bay in. Or maybe something with a cuddy just big enough to sleep two, in case they decided to stay overnight at an anchorage. After all, Tracey spent a weekend every month with Michael. And really, it should have a berth for Tracey, too. Tracey liked to sail—she used to, anyway. Somehow they hadn't got around to it the last summer or two.

Tracey. How would she take to the man who'd replaced her father in her mother's heart? Girls weren't as possessive of their mothers as they were of their fathers, so maybe it wouldn't be too bad. But Tracey and Dan had started off on the wrong foot. Tracey was to blame for that, but Dan had embarrassed her, nonetheless. And girls never—ever—forgot their Big Embarrassing Moments. Tracey could live to be a hundred and twelve; she'd still remember, as if it were yesterday, the night Dan Hawke caught her in the lighthouse and marched her back home.