Rachel Gibson - Tangled Up In You

“Hey, Travis, how are you?” she asked as he moved toward her.

“Good. How’s your cat?”

“She’s at the vet’s today, so it’s fairly quiet around my house.”

“Oh.” He looked up at her and squinted against the glare of the sun. “I’m going to get a dog.”

“Oh.” She remembered what Meg had said about getting Travis a pet. “When?”

“Someday.” He took a bite of his hot dog and said, “I went fishing with my uncle Mick on his boat. We got skunked.” He swallowed, then added, “We drove by on the water and saw you. We didn’t wave, though.”

Of course not. She said her good-byes and went home. The house was still much too quiet, and she drove to Value Rite Drug to do a little nesting of her own. It was time Snowball got a proper pet carrier, and she planned to look for a better bed for the kitten. Obviously the Amazon box wasn’t a hit.

What Maddie hadn’t planned was to run smack-dab in the middle of the Founders Day celebration. She vaguely recalled seeing something about it somewhere, but she’d forgotten all about it. The trip to Value Rite Drug, which normally took about ten minutes, took half an hour. The parking lot was packed with cars from the Founders Day Arts and Crafts Fair held in the park across the street.

Maddie had to circle the parking lot like a vulture until she finally found a slot. Normally she wouldn’t have bothered, but she figured it would probably take her another half hour to get home anyway.

Once inside the store, she found a little cat bed but no carrier. She tossed it into her cart along with a catnip toy, and a cat DVD filled with footage of birds, fish, and mice. She was a bit embarrassed to find herself buying a DVD for a cat, but she figured Snowball might stay off the furniture if she was mesmerized by watching fish.

While at the store, she stocked up on toilet paper, laundry soap, and her most secret indulgence, the Weekly News of the Universe . She loved the stories of fifty-pound grasshoppers and about women who were having Big Foot’s baby, but her favorites were always the Elvis sightings. She dropped the black-and-white magazine into her cart and headed for the checkout lanes.

Carleen Dawson was working register five when Maddie set her items on the counter.

“I heard you’re Alice’s daughter. Or is that just a rumor like Brad Pitt comin’ to town?”

“No, that’s true. Alice Jones was my mother.” Maddie dug around in her purse and pulled out her wallet.

“I worked with Alice at Hennessy’s.”

“Yes, I know,” she said and braced herself for what Carleen might say next.

“She was a nice girl. I liked her.”

Surprise curved Maddie’s lips into a smile. “Thank you.”

Carleen rung up everything and put it all, except the bed, into a bag. “She shouldn’t have been fooling around with a married man, but she didn’t deserve what Rose did to her.”

Maddie swiped her card and entered her PIN number. “I obviously agree.” She paid for her items and walked out of Value Rite feeling a lot better than when she’d walked in. She put everything in the trunk of her car and decided that since she was there, she’d check out the arts and crafts fair. She put her big black sunglasses on the bridge of her nose as she crossed the street and entered the park. She’d never been into arts and crafts, mostly because she didn’t really decorate.

At the Pronto Pup stand, she splurged on a corn dog with extra mustard. She saw Meg and Travis with a tall bald man wearing a sparrow is my co-pirate T-shirt. She noticed right away that Mick wasn’t with them, and she waited for them to pass before she moved to the PAWS booth and looked at pet collars, pet clothes, and feeders. The pink princess cat ottoman was over the top, but she did find a carrier in the shape of a bowling bag. It was red with black mesh hearts and lined in black fur. It also came with a matching wristlet for pet treats. She ordered Snowball a three-story kitty condo and an electronic litter box, to be delivered the following week. The carrier she took with her so that she could bring Snowball home in it the next day.

She hung the carrier on her shoulder and threw her corn dog stick away as she left the booth. As she hooked a right by the Mr. Pottery stand, she practically ran headfirst into Mick Hennessy’s chest. She looked up past the blue T-shirt covering his wide chest, past the throat she’d kissed so often, the stubborn set of his chin and angry press of his mouth, and up into his eyes covered by sunglasses. Her heart pounded and pinched, and heat flushed her body. Her first instinct was to run away from the anger rolling off him in waves. Instead she managed a very pleasant, “Hello, Mick.”

He frowned. “Maddie.”

Her gaze skimmed across his face, feeding images of him to the lonely places inside her, images of his black hair touching his brow and of the bruise on his cheek.

“What happened to your face?”

He shook his head. “Doesn’t matter.”

Panty-tossing Darla stood beside him and asked, “Are you going to introduce me to your friend?”

Until that moment, Maddie had not realized they were together. Darla’s big hair was as fried as ever, and she wore one of her sparkly tank tops and painfully tight jeans.

“Darla, this is Madeline Dupree, but her real name is Maddie Jones.”

“The writer?”

“Yes.” Maddie adjusted the cat carrier on her shoulder. What was Mick doing with Darla? Surely he could do better.

“J.W. told me that he heard you were trying to get the Hennessys and your mother exhumed.”

“Christ,” Mick swore.

Maddie glanced at Mick, then returned her gaze to Darla. “That’s not true. I would never do something like that.”

Mick pulled a wad of cash out of his front pocket and handed it to the other woman. “Why don’t you head over to the beer garden and I’ll meet you there in a minute?”

Darla took the money and asked, “Is Budweiser all right?”

“Fine.”

As soon as Darla walked away, Mick said, “How much longer are you going to be in town?”

Maddie shrugged and watched Darla’s big behind disappear into the crowd. “Can’t really say.” She looked back up into the face of the man who made her broken heart pound in her throat. “Please tell me you aren’t dating Darla.”

“Jealous?”

No, she was angry. Angry that he didn’t love her. Angry that she would always love him. Angry that a part of her wanted to throw herself on his chest like some desperate high school girl and beg him to love her. “Are you shitting me? Jealous of a low-exception dumb-ass? If you want to make me jealous, start dating someone with half a brain and a modicum of class.”

His gaze narrowed. “At least she isn’t running around pretending to be someone she’s not.”

Yes, she was. She was running around pretending she was a size ten, but Maddie chose not to point that out in a crowded park because she did have a modicum of class.

Just above the noise surrounding them he said, “Not everything that comes out of her mouth is a lie.”

“How would you know? You don’t ever stick around long enough to get to know anyone.”

“You think you know me so well.”

“I do know you. Probably better than any other woman, and I’d be willing to bet that I’m the only woman you’ve ever really known.”

Slowly he shook his head. “I don’t know you.”

She looked into his mirrored sunglasses and said, “Yes, you do, Mick.”

“Knowing your favorite sexual position is not what I call knowing you.”

He wanted to reduce what had been between them to just sex. It might have started out that way, but it had become so much more. At least to her. She took a step forward and raised onto the balls of her feet. He was so close she could feel the heat of his skin through his shirt and hers. So close she was sure he could feel her pounding heart as she said next to his ear, “You know more than whether I like it on top or bottom. You know more than the smell of my skin or the taste of me in your mouth.” She closed her eyes and added, “You know me. You just can’t handle who I am.” Without another word she turned on her heels and left him standing there. She couldn’t say that her first encounter with him had gone well, but at least he was going to be thinking about her after she was gone.