CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Aww, sweetie, what’s wrong?” asked Maeve, coming into the room and stopping at my side.
I hurriedly wiped the tears away. “Oh, nothing. I got pepper in my eye.”
She pulled her head back in confusion. “Pepper? How’d you get pepper in your eye?”
I waved her question away, trying to distract her. “Did you find a taxi for me?”
She shook her head sadly. “No, I’m sorry, but I guess they’re all full right now.” She went around the table, picking up dishes and leftover food. She left me alone in the dining room and carried everything into the kitchen.
I grabbed a couple plates and followed her, limping the whole way, too afraid to put all my weight on my foot again. “The taxis are full? What do you mean, full?”
“They only have a couple cars, and they’re on call for all kinds of things. I think tonight there’s a dance at the high school, so they’ll be busy all night shuttling kids around.”
“Wow,” I said. What are the chances that the one time I’d need a taxi in Baker City there’d be a prom going on?
“That’s small-town life for ya,” she said. She didn’t sound upset about it. “You take the good with the bad.”
“Well, aside from that amazing dinner and dessert, I haven’t seen any of the good.” I regretted the words as soon as they were out of my mouth. I blamed Mack for getting me all messed up in the head and causing me to forget my manners. Him and Ian both, two butthead peas in a pod.
“Oh, it’s not all that bad.” There was a smile in her voice.
I breathed a sigh of relief that she hadn’t taken offense to my careless words.
“You’ve only seen the hotel and the road out here, and believe me, that’s no way to judge our little town. You stay the night tonight, and tomorrow I’ll pack you and Mack a nice lunch. He can take you out for a ride and show you a little bit of the hills and some of the other nicer areas. That way when you go back home, you can have a nice well-rounded picture of the Baker City MacKenzies for your research.”
“A ride? As in on a horse?”
“Unless you prefer a four-wheeler.” She piled up dishes next to the sink.
“I don’t even know what that is, but wheels sound better than horse legs to me.”
“We prefer the horses, actually. They don’t cost any gas money, so they’re better for the wallet and the environment. And they can go just about anywhere. Some of the places I’m sure Mack would want to show you are impossible to get to any way other than on horseback.” She looked at me and winked. “You’ll miss half the fun not being on a horse.”
“I’d probably get killed if I tried to ride a horse.” The idea was both thrilling and terrifying at the same time. I’d always been fascinated by the beasts but never considered they’d be a part of my life. As far as I was concerned, horses were for movies and weird rodeo channels on TV.
“You’ve never ridden before?” she asked, sounding like she wouldn’t believe me if I said yes.
“I was close enough to touch one once.”
“I’m sensing a story here. What happened?”
I ran my finger along the edge of the counter and got lost in the memory of being in a barn at a summer camp when I was ten. “I remember thinking how beautiful he was. Huge. Proud or something. The person I was with told me to pet him on the nose. When I finally worked up the nerve to do it and reached my hand out, he lifted his head up in one big jerk and whinnied so loud, I peed my pants.”
Maeve burst out in musical laughter. “Oh, Andie, that’s priceless. How old were you?”
“Nine or ten. Old enough to remember with distinct clarity the humiliation of having peed my pants at an age where a girl isn’t supposed to do that anymore.” I pulled my hand off the counter and put it behind me awkwardly. I felt like the girl with wet pants all over again.
She patted my arm with a soapy hand. “Not to worry. Mack would never let a mean old horse cause you to lose your water. You’ll be as safe as a bug in a rug with him there.” She handed me a wet dish. “Would you mind drying this off for me?” She gestured with her chin to a towel on the nearby counter.
I took the plate from her, frowning at it. “Don’t you have dishwashers in Oregon?”
“Sure, they have them all over, but we’re simple folk out here. I don’t mind doing things by hand. I find it relaxing.”
I rubbed the towel on the plate until it squeaked. Noticing my reflection in the white surface, I smiled. There was something to be said about doing a routine, basic task in the company of someone you enjoyed talking to. It was almost relaxing or meditative. Maeve had an easy way about her that made me feel like I could just be myself, standing next to her here in this kitchen. Glancing at her profile, I wondered if she would totally hate me if I told her what Mack and I had done in Las Vegas. It made me sad to think that she might, which was silly because I’d be gone in just a day or two, and then I’d never see her or Angus again. Or Mack.
My stomach clenched uncomfortably. Why did the thought of never seeing him again bring actual physical pain? I should have been breathing a sigh of relief over it. No way would Bradley be okay with me being here, let alone spending time with a guy like Mack. My fiancé wasn’t stupid. He’d sense something was up right away. It was all part of his killer instinct . . . he could smell underlying emotion in others like a shark could smell a drop of blood in the water. It’s what made him such a successful lawyer; he always got to the bottom of things, even when the people he was up against did everything they could to keep those things secret.
My guts churned with the realization that the chances of me keeping this whole mess from Bradley were very, very slim. I wondered if his feelings for me were strong enough to forgive me. I wondered how much I really cared too, and that worried me more than anything else.
“In the cupboard over there, on your right,” Maeve said without looking up from her task.
I put the plate away, leaving the door open since another one was about to join it.
We stood in the kitchen, doing dishes in companionable silence for another five minutes before the next comment floated out there in the air between us.
“So tell me about this research you’re doing, Andie.”
I glanced at her, but the expression on her face showed nothing but curiosity and dedication to the task of washing. She’d moved onto the serving dishes and silverware.
“Well, I was doing some research and I ran across . . . something that told me I might be related to a MacKenzie, so I thought I’d come out here and see if it was true.” My fingers trembled with the stress of giving her half-truths. She didn’t deserve to be lied to. She’d done nothing wrong.
“What kind of research was it, exactly?”
I decided a little more truth was in order. It was the only way I could keep on speaking; the lies were getting caught in my throat. “Well, actually, I’m getting married.”
She stopped scrubbing the pot she had in the sink before her and waited for my next words.
“I was applying for the marriage license, and there was this document the courthouse came up with, so I decided before I got married, I’d come out and see what it was all about.” My heart rate had picked up, causing me to breathe faster. Any minute I was going to start sounding like I’d just run a mile if I didn’t get a hold of myself. Calm down, idiot!
Maeve’s hand moved in slow circles, round and round the bottom of the pot. “You’re getting married.”
“Yes. Back East. In just over a week.”
“Have you been together long?” She tipped the pot over to scrub the sides and bottom.
“Not quite two years. Long enough.”
She looked at me briefly, a small smile on her lips. “Not that a person can have a timetable for something like that.”
“Oh, I do.” Now I was on firm ground. We’d moved away from talking about the MacKenzie clan and on to my lifeplan. Maeve seemed like a pretty down-to-earth person. I was sure she’d get where I was coming from.
She stopped scrubbing again and turned to face me. “Really? You have a timetable for love?”
“Well, . . . sure. Kind of. I mean, I don’t have it on a calendar. Okay, maybe I do have it on a calendar, but not in that way.” I was getting flustered trying to explain.
“I’m not judging, Andie. I’m just trying to understand.”
“No, I know that. It’s just hard to explain, I guess. See, ever since I was young, I’ve had this plan.”
“Mmm-hmmm . . .” She nodded, rinsing off the pot.
“And in the plan I decided that I had to reach certain goals by the time I was twenty-one and then twenty-seven and then twenty-nine and finally thirty-five.” I took the pot she’d rinsed and put it on the counter, using its support to dry the inside.
She chuckled. “You stopped the plan at thirty-five. Is that when you retire?”
“No.” I smiled back, glad she wasn’t mocking me too hard. “It’s when I’ll be done having children.”
“So what happens if you don’t meet one of your goals?”
“I don’t know. It hasn’t happened yet.” I grinned at her with a little personal pride shining through. “I don’t know why I’m so goal oriented. Meeting goals makes me feel like a success. Like everything is going to be fine in my life.”
She soaped up several forks at the same time. “Was there a time in your life when things weren’t so fine?”
A loud ringing started in my ears. The pounding of my heart got so loud, I worried she’d hear it. “Maybe when I was young, things were a little crazy. But that was a long time ago.” I cleared my throat to get the frog out of it. I never thought or talked about my childhood with anyone. Ever.
She remained silent for a while. When she spoke, it was with a gentle tone that made me want to cry. “Sometimes when our lives are out of control, the only thing that makes us feel secure is to swing in the opposite direction. To control every last detail.”
“Maybe,” I said, not sure that I agreed with her assessment. My lifeplan was a result of several years of wasted time, the result of a series of poor choices. Once I had a lifeplan in place, I started making smart decisions—decisions that amounted to investments in my future. A drunken marriage in Elvis’s chapel of love notwithstanding, my lifeplan had served me well. I was totally on track to be married by my deadline.
“So tell me about your fiancé,” she said, thankfully moving past the discussion of my goals.
“Well, his name is Bradley. He’s two years older than me, and we’re very compatible.”
She smiled again. “Compatible. That sounds romantic.”
I nudged her good-naturedly. “It is. Seriously. We work in the same office—we’re both lawyers. He’s very driven and goal oriented. He has the same ideas about success that I do. He wants to have two children, a boy and a girl, just like I do. He went to Yale, and his parents are attorneys too. We’re a perfect match.”
“Do you love him?”
I accidentally dropped the handful of forks I’d just picked up to dry. Her question made me instantly cranky. “Of course I love him.”
“I was just wondering because you didn’t mention that part.”
“I do love him. I do.” It felt like I was trying to convince myself, but that wasn’t necessary. Of course I love Bradley. He and I were a perfect couple.
“What do your friends think of him?” she asked.
I stopped in the middle of gathering the forks back up and turned partway to look at her.
She finished washing out the sink and turned off the water to look at me. “Did I say something wrong? Am I prying too much?” Her face fell. “I’m sorry. Angus tells me all the time I pry too much.”
I put my hand on her arm and squeezed gently. “No, it’s okay. It’s just a sore spot, actually.” I sighed, my vision drifting off to scenes of my friends’ reactions to Bradley’s behavior. “Truth is, none of my friends like him. Even my secretary at work hates him.”
“Why do you think that is?” she asked, putting her rag down and taking the towel from me to finish drying the silverware.
I shrugged, leaning back against the counter. “I guess he can be pushy. I used to really dislike him myself. Two years ago I used to mock him behind his back.” I frowned. “That’s really terrible, isn’t it?”
“How did you go from dislike to love and marriage? Seems like a pretty big leap.”
I really didn’t have a good answer for her. Even hearing the path to loving Bradley in my head made me kind of cringe. After two years of putting everything I had into love, I’d gotten dumped by Luke in a cold and casual way. I’d gone to Las Vegas and had a wild fling with a hot stranger. Then I’d returned home on a mission to get my life back on track. Bradley just seemed to fit the mold so perfectly, and he’d asked me out when I was feeling lonely and lost. The timing was perfect, or so I’d thought at the time. Why hadn’t I examined this more closely before? Had I been so focused on my lifeplan that I’d missed something? “I don’t know. It sounds silly, but I guess . . . I guess it started when I got back from Las Vegas.”
“Las Vegas?”
“Yeah.” I wasn’t looking at her. I was staring at the floor, lost in the memories. They were coming in clearly for some reason, like it had just happened last week. It was the first time in two years this had happened. “My best friend Kelly was marrying a mortician.”
“A mortician?” Maeve chuckled like I was joking.
“Yes, seriously, she was marrying Matty the mortician. So my other best friend, Candice, organized a bachelorette party in Las Vegas. I was dating a guy named Luke at the time, and I was really busy with work, so I didn’t want to go, but they guilted me into it. Or Ruby did.”
“Who’s Ruby? Is she another friend?”
“No. Yes. She’s both. She’s my assistant, but she’s also like a mother, neighbor, and girlfriend all mixed up into one big ball of fire.”
“She sounds like fun.”
I nodded, warming with the memory of our last few hours together. They were so much better than the last year had been. “Yeah, she is. She is so sassy. But she’s real and she’s honest and she is the best damn legal secretary in the business.”
“Probably very valuable for a busy lawyer,” Maeve suggested.
“Yes, absolutely. She’s not only valuable, she’s also pushy. And she guilted me along with Candice into going to Las Vegas, so I went.”
“Sounds like fun. Girls’ night out in Las Vegas.” She kicked some shoes over in my direction. They looked like moccasins. “Here, put these on. Let’s take a walk.”
I slipped my feet into the comfortably worn leather and followed her out the back door and down the porch stairs, only limping a little now. My ankle felt much better. The air was warm enough that I didn’t need a sweater, but Maeve handed me one that I put over my shoulders.
“So tell me about Las Vegas,” she said. “I’ve never been.”
I walked next to her down a path, headed toward the sounds of cows mooing. “Well, it’s loud and there are lights everywhere all day and night. And there’s this air of excitement, like anything can happen and anything will happen.” I couldn’t stop the smile from blooming on my face. “It’s kind of a magical place in that way.”
“What did you do there? Gamble? I hear the buffets are fabulous.”
“We didn’t see any buffets, but we did gamble. Or I should say, I gambled. My friends ended up in the room most of the night. I guess it wasn’t much of a girls’ night out in the end.”
“They were in the room all night without you?” Her smile disintegrated into an expression of worry.
Shit. Why am I telling her this? “Um, yeah. I was alone for a while that night, but it was okay.” It was more than okay. I had company. My heart clenched at the memories.
“You said you gambled. Which game did you play?”
I swallowed hard. Maeve’s questions were starting to feel more like an interrogation, but it wasn’t because of something she was doing. She was just getting too close to the part where her gorgeous son entered the picture.
“I played blackjack.”
“Oh, that’s Mack’s favorite. He went to Las Vegas with his brother a couple years back, for Ian’s bachelor party, as a matter of fact. He won over a thousand dollars . . . used it to buy a new horse. Funny thing about that, now that I think about it . . .” She turned to me with a weird expression on her face for a few seconds. Then she smiled, and the weird look fell away. “Hey, maybe you were there at the same time.”
I tried to smile, but my lips were trembling too much. Luckily the sun was in her eyes as it dipped closer to the horizon, making me think she couldn’t see me very well. “Maybe,” I said.
Maeve sighed. “That was a tough time for our boys.”
The sadness in her voice made me intensely curious, but it felt wrong to push her for information when it was very possible my interactions with Mack may have influenced the situation. He’d spent at least part of the night with me. If he’d been there for the purpose of celebrating his brother’s last nights as a single man, Ian would have been pissed not to have him around. Maybe Ian knows what happened. Maybe that’s why he’s so rude to me.
I was just about to ask her for details when we turned a bend in the path and came upon a huge group of cows, fences, and men, and the men were in the process of doing things that were making the cows very nervous.