Blame it on Cupid (4 page)

He hadn't looked at a woman seriously in the last three and a half years.

There was a time he'd believed in honor, fidelity, loyalty and all the rest of that crap. There was also a time he thought he was different than his generation—because he really believed in marriage, in the vows, would never have gotten a divorce because of going through a stretch of trouble.

But that was then.

These days he took credit for being a commitment-phobic, allergic-to-rings kind of guy. If that made him irresponsible and selfish—well, he now wore those labels with pride. He'd done the honor thing and got kicked in the teeth. It was a “screw or be screwed” world. He had no intention of playing nice ever again.

Scowling and ticked off, he yanked open his back door and felt the prompt slap of ice air. Hell and more hell. All this voyeurism was going to completely ruin his workday tomorrow—he could already feel a lack-of-sleep headache coming on—and if he wasn't still up, the hounds of memories wouldn't have had a chance to chase after him.

Most days, he wasn't remotely bitter. He didn't want Dianne back, was long over all that. He had a great time with his female friendships and sleep-mates. So did they. He didn't want to hurt anyone. He just had no intention of putting himself in harm's way ever again. Chivalry was very nice, but somebody else could do it. And if somebody thought that made him a cold, unfeeling creep, well, that was tough.

Still glowering, he crossed the yard, swore when the cold, wet grass sneaked into his shoes, hiked up her driveway and closed her damn front doors.

He didn't do it to be nice.

He didn't have a nice-bone left in him. He'd only done it out of plain old selfishness. He knew damn well he wouldn't have been able to sleep, fretting that anyone in hell could have walked through those wide-open front doors. And if he didn't catch at least
some
sleep, he was going to be completely worthless at work tomorrow.

He might enjoy looking at her delectable fanny, but he sure as hell was
not
going to enjoy living next door to such a witless woman.

 

M
ERRY WOKE UP TO
the caterwaul of her traveling alarm clock. She slapped it off, then blearily opened one eye. Seven o'clock.

A god-awful hour for a girl who'd only made it to bed at four-thirty.

She stumbled off the couch, stretched, then forced both eyes open. She vaguely remembered trying to decide where to sleep, but then just pulling a blanket over her head in the living room. Everything about the house had seemed overwhelming at that point.

Still did, for that matter. She thought she knew Charlie Ross. And, of course, people changed when they matured. But where Charlie had been so warm and natural and likeable, his house seemed decorated by a robot. Almost all the surfaces were gray or stainless steel. The walls were filled with gargantuan canvases of scary modern art, and every room had technology so ultra-cool that she couldn't even turn on the TV or set a clock on her own.

Okay, cookie, enough griping.

She stumbled toward the bathroom. Never mind all the looming crises ahead of her, she felt darn good about all the chores she'd accomplished last night.

When she'd first walked in the front door and looked around, she darn near panicked, but kept her mind on what mattered. Charlene. Getting the place prepared for the little girl to come home. So Merry's first priority, obviously, was to put up the pink Christmas tree and presents—that little girl was going to get a Christmas come hell or high water!

And after that—well, the house had shaken her up on a zillion emotional levels, but just making it livable was the first challenge. Clearly no one had cleaned the house since Charlie died. There was a sock in the living room, a jacket hanging on a kitchen chair—nothing terrible—but reminders of her dad that Merry didn't want Charlene exposed to the minute she walked in the door.

Once all that tidying was done, she'd recognized the ghastly smell in the kitchen as something rotting in the fridge. Hell's bells, there went the rest of the night. She'd dumped the icky fridge contents, scrubbed and sanitized, chased out to an all-night grocery to bring in some milk and basics, then came back to do a dust and vacuum and bathroom-clean.

In the shower, shampoo streaming down her face, she admitted to herself that in real life, she didn't mind being a slob. Or a relative slob. Far too many things were more interesting and important than dust, but Merry could justify her brief cleaning freak-out. It wasn't about dirt. It was about trying to make Charlene's coming home as painless and nontraumatic as possible.

After a fast blow-dry, Merry shimmied into jeans, a fuzzy yellow mohair sweater, socks. In the kitchen, she stared bleary-eyed at the fancy coffeemaker. It looked pizzazz-y, like something created in 2075. Shinier than lip gloss. And she could turn it on, she'd discovered last night. She just couldn't figure out how to make it produce coffee.

It wasn't fair to make a girl start the day without caffeine.

It wasn't fair to make a girl start such a critical day without sleep, either.

She nabbed an apple—bought fresh last night—and reminded herself of the lawyer's behavior the day before. Lee Oxford still grated on her mind. His mercenary thinking. His coldness. The fact that he'd never once even mentioned Charlene's name.

Her resolve ballooned all over again. No matter how crazy anyone thought she was, there was no way—none in this universe—that Merry would abandon a kid. Ever.

She knew too well what abandonment felt like.

When it came down to it, maybe it was a good thing the lawyer had been such a barracuda. His attitude had hard-wired her determination. She bit a chunk of apple, grabbed her jacket, the directions to the rest home she'd gotten from the lawyer and then sprinted outside. A fresh skid of snow had fallen in the wee hours. Brushed with dawn light, the whole neighborhood looked pearl-soft.

Her neighbor was up, judging from the lights in his kitchen window, but she didn't catch sight of him. More than once last night, she'd thought it'd be no hardship to have such a good-looking guy next door. So he was likely married. She could still look, couldn't she? And he had a truck. He looked mechanical and handy. More things to love in a neighbor.

It looked as if she had
lots
of neighbors. Other cars were steaming in their driveways, warming up, the lineup resembling the start-up of the Indy 500—although this particular lineup was notably chunky gas guzzlers, suburbia getting ready to join the exodus to the freeways and work. A few waved at her.

She waved back, noting they all seemed to be in pinstriped suits—both the men and the women—and doing the wool-coat thing. Worry tried to rag her nerves again. She just felt like such an alien. She'd never owned a pinstriped suit, never wanted one. Still, she reminded herself that there wasn't that big an age difference—she was joining the thirtysomething bracket as of her birthday next month.

She loved new experiences besides, right?

Her spirits zoomed higher as she turned on the freeway, the map crackled over the steering wheel in front of her. When push came to shove, it didn't really matter whether she fit into the neighborhood or the house or not. Screw all that. This was about a little girl.

And she'd waited as long as she possibly could to get her arms folded around Charlene.

The directions to the place did seem a little tricky. She checked the map again, then eased to the right when another driver honked at her. Naturally she was concentrating on her driving. Mostly. But the appalling image of Charlene's bedroom kept popping into her mind.

Nothing about the inside or outside of that darn house matched anything she ever knew about Charlie Ross, but the worst room—the absolute worst—was Charlene's bedroom.

Another driver honked at her. She shook her apple at him. For Pete's sake, was everybody cranky near D.C.?

Last night, there wasn't anything she could do but put a couple fresh bouquets of flowers in Charlene's bedroom. She couldn't find a vase in the house to save her life, but she'd found big glasses, and the grocery store had thankfully sold cut flowers.

And once Charlene got home, Merry figured they could fix the room. In fact, it'd be a super bonding thing to do together. The poor kid had no spread, no curtains, no rugs. It just didn't make sense. If her dad could afford that ghastly house, don't you think he could have sprung for some nice, soft carpeting and pretty colors and girl stuff for his daughter? Merry pictured some Mary Eddy prints, maybe a canopy bed—the room was huge. They could throw out all that awful dark furniture, put in white. Maybe buy a little vanity.

Charlene had a fab stereo system, no question, ditto for the computer and all. But there were cute desks and centers to contain all that mess of wires these days, something with style and color. Maybe Merry knew zip about parenting—but she knew girls.

Her turnoff led her away from bustling suburbia. The last turn was into a remote old neighborhood with dignified shade trees and cracked sidewalks.

Where she pulled in, the big old frame house had been converted into an assisted-living facility.

Charlene's one living relative was a great grandmother, who lived here—along with a dozen of her cronies over age ninety. It was no place for a child, but the foster-care system was predictably jammed up around the Christmas holiday, and the dietician who ran the home claimed they had a bed for Charlene—but only on an extremely temporary basis. Or that was the story Lee Oxford had told Merry when he'd first called.

The driveway was gravel, the only vehicle in sight an aging van. Merry hiked up the handicapped ramp, trying to rev herself up for this first meeting—not that she needed any revving. From the moment she made the decision to come, she'd been researching everything about eleven-year-olds she could think of. Her own memories of that age were intense, but obviously, trends and styles changed. She'd bought
Bratz
and
Elle Girl
magazines, listened to Ciara and the Click Five and the other groups the music store promised her were the “in” music for 'tweens, hit the library, read some Blume and horse stories and tried to pick up on the writers the 'tweens were into these days.

She rapped on the front door, and when no one immediately answered, rapped again. Abruptly a white-haired charmer with a cane answered the door. The lady was dressed in a pink-and-green dotted sweater with purple pants and a huge red bow sagging over one ear. Lots of positive attitude. Just deaf as a rock.

“Well, aren't you the pretty one, dearie-dear. Come on in….”

One step inside and Merry could smell urine. From the entry, she caught a partial view of a giant living room off to the right, where a wall TV did
The Morning Show
at screaming volume. Chairs and couches and wheelchairs cupped close to the set in a tight semicircle. At a glance, she counted around ten people in the cluster, but then she was distracted by a bony, hairless elderly woman barreling straight for her in a wheelchair, evidently bent on escape.

Quickly she closed the door behind her—which prevented the escape, but didn't stop the wheelchair from clipping her in the knees. She winced, ducked, smiled for the charmer.

“Hi, I'm Merry Olson. I'm here for Charlene Ross. I don't know if she's around here or with her great-grandmother? But I have papers—”

“Hey? You're selling cookies, you say?”

“No, no. I'm not selling cookies. I'm looking for Charlene Ross—”

“Hey, Frank, I think she's selling cookies!” the charmer bellowed and then blessed her with another warm smile. “I hope you've got those mint chocolate ones, honey, those are my very favorite—Wilhemma, quit ramming her with your chair, you old bitch—”

“Now, now.” A harried-looking man shot out of the kitchen, a dish towel over his arm. “We don't use that language, Julia. I've told you that before—” A smile for Merry.

She was pretty sure he identified himself as Frank, and the caretaker of the place, but it was impossible to hear anything clearly over the eardrum-piercing volume on the TV.

She explained why she was here—or tried to—but she was so anxious to find Charlene that her attention kept straying to the living room. She didn't expect to find a little girl in the middle of the geriatric set, but still, she wanted an impression of the place Charlene had been camping out in since the funeral.

Closest to the TV, she saw an old man, then an older man, then a man who'd clearly lived in the l700s and was just hanging on by a thread…then an old lady, who was holding hands with another old lady, followed by someone sprawled on the couch of indeterminate sex and drool drizzling down his chin….

There was only one face she couldn't catch at all, someone in a big old Morris chair, and when she crooked her head forward she identified a young person. Her heart leaped—but only for a second. It was a boy, not a girl. The kid was bent down, playing some kind of computer game, but the clothes gave away his gender. He was wearing army fatigues—long tee and pants—with big boots, and had a brush cut as if he'd just signed up for the marines.