James Patterson - I, Michael Bennett

“Wow,” I said after our waitress, Marlena, dropped a humongous slice of maple mascarpone cheesecake in front of me and a creme brulee in front of Tara. “This was fantastic, Tara. I hope you forgive me for ruining your surprise,” I said.

“If anyone needs to be forgiven, it’s me,” Tara said. “After all, I made such an ass out of myself at the St. Regis. Pretty much bare-assed, too, if memory serves me right.”

“Were you?” I said. “When was this?”

“Very funny, Mike. I haven’t forgotten that night. I probably never will. At least the parts I can remember. You tucked me in. That was so sweet, so genteel. Cary Grant couldn’t have been more… Cary Grant. But even now, part of me wishes that you hadn’t, Mike. Is that wrong to say? Part of me wishes that you had stayed.”

I took a sip of the Champagne at my elbow. Low on the speakers, an opera diva was singing a beautiful aria.

The woman in front of me was pretty much flawless. Dark and voluptuous, smart as a whip, tough, and yet caring and kind. There are women you meet in life that you know you could-and probably should-fall deeply in love with. Tara was exactly that. She was a keeper. One ripe for the keeping. All it would take would be for me to reach across the table through the candlelight and take her graceful hand.

And yet, I didn’t do it. In the end, I couldn’t. My hand stayed on my glass, the aria ended.

“Ah, Mike. Whoever she is, she’s lucky,” Tara said, putting her head down and digging into her dessert hard enough to make the plate clink. “Luckier than she’ll ever know.”

Tara dropped me off in front of the lake house half an hour later. It was pin-drop quiet on the way back. I wanted to explain that it wasn’t her. That it wasn’t about attraction. But even I knew how lame that would sound. I wisely kept it zipped, for once.

“Thank you for dinner,” I said as we stopped in the gravel driveway.

Somewhere between rage and tears, Tara sat motionless behind the wheel, staring dead ahead as her motor ticked. I took the half minute of her complete silence as my cue to get out. Gravel flew as she peeled back out onto the country road. A tiny piece of it nailed me in the corner of my right eye and became pretty much embedded. Then there was just me and all my friendly chittering cricket friends as I stood there in the dark.

“Way to go, Mike,” I mumbled to myself as I climbed, half blind, up the creaky wooden steps to the front door. “Way to win friends and really influence people.”

As I reached for the front door, something funny happened. It opened by itself as the porch light came on. I blinked in the light with my left eye as I rubbed furiously at the right one. My crazy day wasn’t over, apparently. Not even close.

My kids’ loving nanny, Mary Catherine, appeared in the miraculously open doorway with arms crossed over her chest. Even with only one peeper working, I could see that the expression on her face was more than vaguely familiar. It was the same one I’d just seen on Tara’s face before she gave me a face full of gravel.

Will Shakespeare was wrong, I thought, rubbing at my eye as moths whacked into each other over my head.

Hell hath no fury like two women scorned.

Standing there, I suddenly thought of a dumb expression from my childhood. It arrived instantly, like a mental text message from Mike Bennett, circa 1978.

Your ass is grass, it said.

“Well, if it isn’t Mr. Michael Bennett, finally home, drunk, after his many adventures abroad,” Mary Catherine said, clapping her hands together sarcastically.

“That is who just dropped you off, correct?” she said, cocking her head. “A broad?”

She had me dead to rights. Even under the direst of circumstances, I always made every effort to contact her about my status and inquire about what was going on at the house, about the kids. And I hadn’t. I’d gone off to work pretty much yesterday, and I hadn’t lifted the phone once. Not only that, but I knew full well what Mary Catherine thought of my new friend and colleague, Tara McLellan.

With nothing in the holster, I tried drunken charm.

“Mary Catherine, hello,” I said with a courtly bow. “Long time no see. How is everything?”

“Bad, Mr. Bennett,” she said, tears welling in her blue eyes. “Bad and about to get worse.”

“Mary Catherine, come on. I can explain,” I said.

She stood there, glaring furiously at me through her soft, wet eyes.

“Actually, I can’t,” I said after a moment. “Only that I screwed up. I should have called you.”

“And told me what? That you were going to be late tonight because you were out on a date?”

I stood there, wincing, as I remembered what Mary Catherine had said on our walk. The date I was supposed to plan but never did.

“It’s not what you think. That was Tara McLellan, the prosecutor on the Perrine case,” I said. “It was work, Mary Catherine. She came up to the Newburgh meeting to discuss the feds helping out with the gang problem.”

Mary just stood and stared at me, the sadness in her blue eyes really killing me inside.

“You mean the Newburgh town meeting that ended at ten?” she finally said.

“Yes,” I said. “We had dinner after.”

“Dinner,” Mary nodded. “How special. Three hours of it, too. I guess I can toss the plate of ziti the kids and I saved for you. And the slice of cake from Jane’s birthday.”

“Shit,” I said, closing my good eye. “Mary Catherine, I completely forgot. I’m sorry. Let me come in and we’ll talk about it.”

“Oh, by all means come in,” Mary Catherine said, opening the screen door, which gave out a deafening squeak.

I saw then that she was dressed-jeans, a T-shirt, and a backpack on her back. No! Wait. What?

“The house is all yours, because I’m leaving,” she said. “I’m leaving, Michael Bennett. And I’m not coming back.”

“Mary Catherine, come on. I know you’re angry, but that’s crazy. It’s… it’s one in the morning.”

“No,” Mary Catherine said, tears streaming down her cheeks. “It’s actually two in the morning, and I won’t come on. Not anymore.”

She stepped forward suddenly. For a second, I thought she was going to belt me one. It was almost worse when she stopped herself and didn’t.

She brushed past me and hit the stairs.

I tried to say something, tried to come up with words that would make her stop in her tracks, but there was nothing to say. She walked past me where I stood rooted to the porch and right out into the summer night.

I would have gone after her immediately, but my eye was on fire, so I ran inside to splash water on my stinging face. After I finally worked loose the gravel grit from my burning eye, I rushed back to the front door.

I was convinced that I’d see Mary Catherine there on the porch, her I’m-running-away ploy finished now, ready to give me more of the grief I definitely deserved. But she wasn’t there. She wasn’t even in the driveway anymore. I jogged out to the road and stood peering left and right into the darkness.

You’ve gotta be kidding me, I thought. There was no sign of her. She was really gone.

I went back up the driveway and hopped into the minibus. Driving after having had a few drinks was irresponsible, I knew, but I didn’t care. Panic was building inside of me at that point, the kind of pure panic reserved for a shitheel who realizes that he might have just taken advantage of the special woman in his life one too many times.

I almost took out the mailbox as I reversed it out onto the country lane. Trees wheeled by in the sweep of the headlights as I screeched the stupid clunky bus out onto the road. Then I put it in drive and floored it.