Knocking at Her Heart (Conover Circle #1) (15 page)

She twirled her pasta.
He
likes me.
Another half twirl.
He likes me not.
Full twirl.
He
likes me.

“What are you doing?

“Nothing.” Maddie placed her
knife and fork across her half-eaten dinner and carried it to the kitchen sink.
She set down the plate at the exact moment a horn blared. Not the quick beep
you normally heard. This was an
I’m-doing-this-until-I-get-some-attention
kind of blare.

Sam? She didn’t think it was his
style. Maddie walked over to her window, looked out, saw what was happening,
and said, “You better come over here, Mother.”

“I’m busy picking cat hair off my
behind,” Frances said. “Wearing black here is a mistake. That little creature
must shed a pound a day.”

“Uh huh.” No time to defend
Snowball. The kitten was the least of her mother’s worries. “Please. You need
to see this.”

Frances walked to the window and
looked out.

“Did you know he was coming?”
Maddie asked. Her father’s Mercedes convertible was parked in her driveway.

Her mother backed away from the
window. “Of course not,” she denied, her tone indignant. “I would have told him
to stay home.” 

Maddie’s doorbell rang. “I’m
going to let him in.”

Her mother rolled her eyes.
“Whatever. I’ll be down in a few minutes.”

Maddie walked down her stairs and
opened the door. “Hello, Father,” she said.  

“Madelyn. I’ve come back.” 

She couldn’t help herself. “Thank
you, Father. It might have taken me a while to figure that out.”

The man had flown out Saturday
night. It was now Monday evening. That meant he’d been home less than a day
before he’d turned around and driven back to Conover.

He drew himself up, taking on the
look that had sent med students running down the halls. “Sarcasm does not
become you,” he said. He looked over Maddie’s shoulder. “How is your mother?”

“She’s fine, I guess.” Her father
looked tired. His eyes were bloodshot, his dress shirt was wrinkled, and if she
wasn’t mistaken, he’d spilled coffee on it. “Do you…uh…want to come in?”

“I’ll get my bag.”

His bag?
He was staying? No way. Maybe he
just intended to get a clean shirt.

She watched him walk to his car.
Behind her, she heard the sounds of her mother coming downstairs. By the time
her father returned, her mother had grabbed a chair in the kitchen. She flipped
pages of the newspaper, like she couldn’t care less that her husband had
arrived.

The woman had fixed her hair. And
put on lipstick.

Strange behavior for somebody who
wanted to send her man packing.

“Frances.”  Peter Sinclair
took the opposite chair. 

Her mother continued flipping
pages.

Oh brother. Maddie was already on
pins and needles. Yesterday Sam had said they would talk tomorrow and well, it
was tomorrow.

“What happened to your floor?” he
father asked, looking across the room.

“My dishwasher sprung a leak. It
ruined the floor and subfloor. Travis Muldoon put a piece of plywood over it
and he’s putting the new floor in tomorrow.”

Her father frowned. “Wasn’t your
bathroom ceiling leaking just a few days ago?”

“Yes.”

“You seem to have a lot go wrong
with this house.”

Funny. She’d recently been thinking
the same thing. But her most immediate problem was
this
. Her father
drummed his fingers on the table. Her mother flipped pages and tapped her foot.
They were a regular percussion section. Unfortunately, playing off of different
sheet music.

“Look, you two,” Maddie said,
when she couldn’t take it another minute. “Can’t you at least be civil to one
another?”

Her father held up his hands.
“I’m the one who is trying, Madelyn. I’m the one who drove 750 miles to see his
wife.”

Frances looked up.  “Was your
girlfriend busy?”

Her father pressed his lips
together.

“I don’t recall asking you to
come,” Frances added.

Peter Sinclair played with the
watchband on his wrist. “I think we need to talk.”

“About?” Frances asked, sounding
bored.

“Next steps,” Peter said.

Maddie was close enough that she
could see the pulse beating in her mother’s neck and she swore the big heart
muscle had jumped into high gear. She braced herself for some kind of
explosion, but her mother calmly folded up her newspaper. “I’m tired,” she
said. “And I’m not interested in talking about next steps.” She got up from the
table. “I’m going to bed.”

“Kind of early for bed, isn’t
it?” her father asked.

It was just after seven.

Her mother yawned and stretched.
“I had a big weekend.”

Maddie could hear her father’s
teeth snap shut. “I’m not leaving,” he said.

“I don’t care,” Frances said. “It
makes no difference to me one way or the other.”

Maddie might have believed that
if she hadn’t seen the lipstick.

And her father had driven a long
way. He had a bag. 

“Father, you’re welcome to stay
here,” Maddie said. “You can sleep in the daycare. There’s a pull-out sofa in
the blue room.”

“I appreciate that,” he said very
formally. “We’ll talk tomorrow,” he said to his wife’s back as she walked upstairs.

Frances didn’t bother to answer.
Maddie waited until she heard the door to her upstairs apartment close. The
kitchen was so quiet she could hear the clock on the wall ticking. “Good
drive?” she asked her father.

“Uneventful.”

“Right.”  Tick, tock. “Have
you had dinner?”

Peter Sinclair smiled. “What? No
questions? Don’t you want to know exactly what I want to say to your mother?”

Maddie shook her head. Over the
last twenty-four hours she’d learned one thing. She didn’t know squat about
relationships or what made a relationship work. “That’s between you and her.”

Now he looked interested. “You’re
not taking sides?”

“I didn’t realize it was a soccer
match.”

Peter Sinclair actually laughed.
He rubbed a hand across his face and looked every one of his sixty years. “It’s
more like a tug-of-war.”

Maddie sighed. “You’ll probably
need a lot of strength for a game like that.”

“Cheesecake is good for that.”

He’d remembered that was her
favorite dessert. For some reason, that made almost everything seem fine.

Sam might come while she was
gone, but it was, after all, cheesecake. “Let’s go, Dad. My friend Dante owns a
local restaurant and his mom makes the cheesecake. It’s something.”

*

 An hour later Maddie walked
up the stairs to her apartment. She’d left her father in the blue room, in
front of the television, with fresh sheets on the sofa bed. When she pushed her
door open, she wasn’t surprised to see her mother sitting on the couch.

“I thought you were tired,”
Maddie said.

“Where were you?” her mother
asked, totally avoiding the comment.

“At The Blue Moon. We went for
dessert. I’d have brought you some, but I thought you’d be sleeping.”

“So? What did he have to say
about me?”

They hadn’t talked about Frances.
They’d talked about his work, her work, the drive to Wisconsin, and the
upcoming election. They’d debated public versus private education and picked
their favorite reality television show. They’d each wolfed down a piece of
cheesecake and then, feeling dangerous, they’d split an Amaretto-flavored crème
brûlée that Dante said was on the house as long as she promised to tell people
how good it was. 
             

The evening had been surprisingly
nice, and she didn’t want her mother to spoil it. “We didn’t talk about you. I
told him I didn’t want to.”

Frances chewed her lip. “So he
didn’t give you any clue as to what the next steps might be?”

Maddie shook her head. “What do
you think they are, Mother?”

Now Frances’ bottom lip trembled.
“Maybe he’s come all this way to tell me he wants a divorce.” Her mother’s eyes
filled with tears.

Maddie sank down on the couch
next to her mother. If it had been Carol or one of her friends, she’d have
gathered them in her arms. But this was Frances. She and Frances didn’t touch.

Two fat tears slid down her
mother’s cheeks.

Oh, hell. She reached out,
brought her mom close, and held her while she sobbed. 

Frances Sinclair cried like she’d
been saving it up for a while. When she finally stopped, the front of Maddie’s
shirt was wet.

“Better?” Maddie asked.

Her mother gave one final sniff.
“I guess. I wouldn’t want your father to know I was crying.”

“He won’t hear it from me.”
Maddie examined her mother closely. “How exactly do you hope this all ends,
Mom?”

Her mother sucked in a big
breath. “I don’t know. When I saw that note, I was devastated. Then I got mad.
And when I came here and sent your father away the first time, I felt almost
righteous. But then I went on that stupid date. And I just felt confused. I
don’t want to date. I liked being married.”

“So tell him that.”

“I can’t. First of all, I won’t
give him the satisfaction. Second of all, I don’t know if I can ever forgive
him.”

“People make mistakes,” Maddie
said.

Her mother looked her in the eye.
“I might be able to forgive him for the nurse.”

“Well, then, what’s the problem?”

Her mother didn’t answer for at
least a minute. When she did, her voice was soft. “The problem is, I love him
more than he loves me. I don’t know how to fix that.”

Maddie had gotten her mother
settled in bed with a cup of hot tea and a stack of magazines. Then she’d run
the water for an almost-scalding hot bath. She’d just stepped out, looking like
a little prune, when she heard the doorbell. She glanced at her watch that hung
over the edge of the sink. It was almost nine o’clock. She grabbed for her
robe, wrapping it tight around her. The doorbell rang again. "I'm
coming," she hissed under her breath.

She ran down her hallway,
stopping quickly to check her mother. The woman was sleeping, a magazine open
across her chest, the light still on. Maddie flipped the light off. She left
the magazine where it was. She hurried to her apartment door and opened it just
in time to look down the stairs and see her father open the front door. 
Sam stood there with a pizza box in one hand and a bottle of wine in the other.

“Dr. Sinclair,” Sam said.
“I…uh…didn’t expect to see you.”

Her father rubbed his chin in
contemplation. “I’m not sure I could say the same thing about you, young man.
Let me get my daughter.”

“I’m here,” Maddie said.

Both men looked up. Sam smiled
and her father frowned.

“Maybe you should get dressed,”
her father said. Then he threw up his hands in the air. “What am I doing? Just forget
I’m here.” He turned and walked back to the blue room. He started to pull the
pocket door closed and then stopped. “Sam,” he said, “it’s nice to see you
again.” Then Peter Sinclair shut the door, leaving them alone.

Sam held up the pizza and wine. “I’m
sorry it’s so late. I got delayed. And, I, uh, didn’t have dinner. I thought
maybe you’d want to join me.”

Cheesecake. Crème brûlée. Pizza?

Sure. Sounded good to her.

“May I come up?” he asked.

She shook her head and walked
down the stairs. “My mother is upstairs. Maybe we could just take this outside
and sit on the porch.”

He nodded, absently. She realized
her robe was gaping open and that he’d been
looking.          
  

She clenched the fabric together
and backed away from him, resisting the urge to explain that the girls weren’t
usually wrinkled. “I’ll get a corkscrew from the kitchen,” she said.

When she got outside, he was
sitting on the big wooden porch swing. She joined him and handed him the
corkscrew and two plastic glasses.

“At least they’re not Sippy
cups,” he said. He poured and handed her back one of the glasses. “Your dad is
here. What’s that mean?”

“I have no idea,” she said.

He smiled but it didn’t reach his
eyes.

She took a sip. There was
something very different about Sam tonight.

He set his wine down and dished
out pizza. “Hope you like Canadian Bacon and mushrooms.”

“Any pizza from The Blue Moon is
delicious.”  Maddie took a bite. A second one. Saw that Sam’s plate was
still resting on his lap.

This was driving her crazy. “Sam,
you said you wanted to talk.” 

He nodded and moved his plate
aside. “I wanted to tell you about Gwen.”

She was all ears. “All right,”
she said, trying not to look too interested. “Who is she?”

“She was my wife.”

Well, that explained why they’d
lived together.

He leaned his head against the
back of the chair and closed his eyes. “We dated all through high school and
college. We got married my first year of medical school. I never talk about
Gwen. Never. But I really wanted to tell you.”

Oh boy. Could she take it? Could
she really just sit here and listen to Sam talk about the women he had loved?
Maybe still loved? 

Maybe she’d gotten tired of being
a doctor’s wife? Maybe she’d gotten tired of her husband loving medicine more
than he loved her?

Sam used his feet to push off and
the swing was gently swaying.

 For Maddie, it was a little
like getting on a carnival ride at the county fair after eating two corn dogs
and a stick of cotton-candy. She just felt sick. But the ride had started—there
was nothing to do but tough it out. “How long ago was it that you got
divorced?”

He jerked his head. “What?”

Oh, God. He was still married. It
was the Ferris wheel, and she was stopped up on top, with some fool who wanted
to shake the bucket. “I…I assumed you were divorced.”

“Gwen died. In a car wreck three
years ago.”

A widower. How stupid of her. She
hadn’t even given that a thought.

“I’m sorry, Sam. That must have
been horrible.”

“Yes. She lived for twelve hours after
the crash but never regained consciousness. I didn’t get to say goodbye. I…I
didn’t get to say a lot of things.”

He rested his elbows on his knees
and put his face in his hands, massaging his temple as if he had a very bad
headache. Maddie scooted across the swing. Feeling awkward and ill prepared to
help, she patted his knee. “I am so sorry, Sam. I’m sure you loved her very
much.”

He nodded. “I did. I really did.”

His voice had cracked. What was
it he’d said? That he couldn’t talk about her. Maybe there was a way she could
help. “Tell me about her, Sam. Tell me about your wife.”

He moved his head so that their
eyes met. She nodded and smiled at him. He settled back.

“She loved vintage clothing,” he
said. “She used to haunt the second-hand stores for the right piece.”

Maddie licked her dry lips. “What
else?”

He didn’t say anything for
several minutes. His eyes were open but not focused on her.

“She made the best lasagna,” he
said finally, “and she loved to decorate the apartment for Halloween. She had a
collection of albums that she wouldn’t give up.” 

Maddie pressed on her stomach. It
didn’t feel good to be jealous of a dead woman. “She sounds wonderful.”

He didn’t agree or disagree. He
simply sat very still, very quiet. Finally, he spoke.  “Thank you. Thank
you for letting me remember those things, for letting me talk about them.”

“I’m glad you told me.”

He stared at her.  His dark
eyes were a mix of hot emotion.  “I guess I’ve only got one more
question,” he said.

The dryness had spread to her
throat. “What?” she whispered. 

“Will you let me kiss you again?”

The Ferris wheel started up
again, this time at triple speed. They were whipping around in circles, making
her heart race and her blood pound. “I’ve been sort of hoping you would.”

He pulled her close and bent his
head. His lips were warm, his touch was soft.

It was nice but not nearly as
nice as when he’d had his hands under her shirt and her back pressed up against
the wall. She opened her mouth.

His tongue was tentative. She
urged him on with her own. His hand moved and she felt the belt of her robe
release. His hand was inside, his warm fingers caressing her back, making a
streak of heat burn down her spine.

She arched, pushing her breasts
toward him.
Make the ride go faster. Make it fly
. Finally, he moved his
hands across her ribs, up the middle of her stomach, and then finally, with
great gentleness, rubbed the tips of her breasts.

He lifted his mouth and she
opened her eyes. “You’re sure?” he asked.

She nodded.

“Oh God, Maddie,” he said and crushed
his lips to hers once again. She ran her fingers through his hair. Then,
needing to touch him, to feel his warm skin, she moved one hand down the back
of his head and stuck her hand inside the loose neckline of his scrubs. She
massaged the strong muscles of his back. He groaned and she felt powerful.

“You’re so beautiful,” he said,
his lips hovering just above hers. His hand was on her breast. “So beautiful
and so giving. I want to—”

The shrill ring of his cell
interrupted him. He jerked his hand back and fumbled with the phone. Maddie
scooted across the swing, pulling the edges of her robe together.

The Ferris wheel had come to a
screeching halt. Her body was hitting the crash bar and it hurt.

He scanned the number, then looked
at her. “It’s Jean. She wouldn’t call me unless it was important.”

“Answer it,” she said.

She tried not to listen. She
wanted to ignore what was pulling him away. He ended the conversation and put
the phone down. “I’ve got to go. Jean is having a tough night and needs me.”

“Go,” she said.

“I probably can’t get back
tonight.”

That was a good thing. No telling
what would have happened if they hadn’t been interrupted. What had she been
thinking? Nothing, obviously. She’d been busy enjoying the ride, not
contemplating what would happen when she ran out of tickets. “It’s late, Sam.
Go take care of your family.”

“Once again, I’m sorry,” he said.
“Maybe I should just get that written on my forehead.”

He looked miserable. “I’m not
sure that your patients would find much comfort in that.”

She’d managed to make him smile.

“You’re something, Maddie. You’re
something special.”

As special as his wife? The dead
wife he mourned. “Call me tomorrow, Sam.”

*

Tom dropped his racket onto the
court and sank down on the floor. He’d barely managed to win. Donald had either
recently upped his game or this was another area of his life where he was
getting soft.

That wasn’t a comforting thought.

“We’ve got a problem with Sam,”
Tom said.

Donald wiped the sweat off his temple.
“Really?”

“He’s not thinking straight.
Lately, he’s been spending some time with Maddie Sinclair, and now he thinks we
need to start looking for another location.”

“What do you think about that?”
Donald asked.

“I think we’re past that. We’ve
already got an agreement on the house next door to hers. We’ll tear that down
for parking when the time comes.”

“Does Sam know that?”

“No. We had discussed that we
wouldn’t buy any additional property until we secured the main location. But
Percy got wind that the people were having money trouble so he got to them. I
think we ought to just keep that to ourselves. What do you think?”

“I don’t like keeping things from
a partner,” Donald said. “It’s not a good way to run a business. You know I
still remember what you said the first time you saw Sam do a surgery. You said
he was gifted.”

“He is, damn it. He just needs to
get his head back in the game.”

“I’ll defer to your judgment,”
Donald said, wrapping a white towel around his neck.

He always did, even though he was
technically the senior partner. That’s what made their arrangement work so
well. Tom picked up the racket he’d dropped onto the floor earlier.
          

“Just don’t forget that we need
Sam,” Donald said, showing a rare bit of independence.

“I know that,” Tom said. 
Christ he hated this. He and Donald couldn’t do the kind of surgeries anymore
that Sam could. He didn’t know if Sam had more guts, or better training, or
just inherent talent. He was their ticket to national recognition. His coming
to Conover had been a damn miracle. Thank God his sister had MS. “Don’t worry
about him. We don’t need him to convince Maddie Sinclair.”

“You sound awfully sure.”

There was no need to tell Donald
about his conversation with Percy. “Maddie Sinclair’s house will be ours and
Sam will never be the wiser.”

Donald shook his head and walked
off the court. “You better be right, Tom. ‘Cause if you’re not, I got a feeling
there’s going to be hell to pay.” 

*

The following morning, at shortly
after five, Maddie opened her upstairs apartment door and from downstairs,
could smell the distinct odor of burning bacon. She took the steps two at a
time and rounded the corner just in time to see her father, an oven mitt on his
right hand, dump something black into the garbage disposal. He looked like he’d
already showered and shaved. He was dressed in slacks and a long-sleeved white
dress shirt.

“Good morning,” he said. “Bacon
got away from me.”

“I see that,” she said and
blinked. The entire kitchen was smoky. She turned on the exhaust fan above the
stove.  

He peeled off several more strips
of raw bacon, put it in the pan, and turned the burner on. He opened the
refrigerator, pulled out a carton of eggs, and proceeded to crack six over a
plastic bowl. He picked up a whisk like he had every right to.

Did he not realize that what he
was doing looked odd as hell?

She pulled her biggest cup out of
the cupboard, filled it to the brim with coffee, and took four quick, hot sips.
It burned all the way down.

“I didn’t know you could cook,”
she said. For as long as she could remember, he’d always eaten breakfast in the
hospital cafeteria.
I need to get an early start
, he’d told her the one
time she’d asked.