Days Like This (34 page)

They broke apart for breath.  She
was trembling all over, her body aching in ways she’d never imagined before.  So
this was what all the screaming was about.  Who knew?  Paige MacKenzie wrapped
her arms around Mikey Lindstrom’s neck and kissed him again, a kiss she could
feel in every inch of her body, a kiss she wanted to go on and on forever, or
until she died, whichever came first.

From out of nowhere, a car raced
toward them.  They broke apart, each of them taking a step backward.  For a
moment, they just stared at each other.  “Holy shit,” he said.

The car, moving too fast, raised
a cloud of dust on the gravel road.  Just before it reached them, she
recognized it.  The driver’s window came down, and as he passed them, Luke leaned
his head out the window and yelled,
“Whoo-heeeee!”

And he was gone, around a corner
and out of sight.  She looked at Mikey, and he looked at her.  “That boy,” he
said, “has some serious issues.”

Rattled, she said, “Looks like
the party’s over.”  But she wasn’t one hundred percent sure which party she was
referring to.

“I’d better get you back,” he
said, “before they come looking for you.”

“Yeah.  That’s probably a good
idea.”

He hesitated.  “Look, Paige…”

Trying to slow the erratic
beating of her heart, she said, “What?”

He took a deep breath.  “Never
mind.  It’s not important.  Come on, let’s get you home before you freeze to
death.”

“Alone at last,” his wife said. 
“I thought they’d never go home.”  She took off her robe and hung it over the
chair, then lifted the bed covers she’d already turned down and slipped between
soft Egyptian cotton sheets.

“It was a little intense, wasn’t
it?”  Sitting on the edge of the bed, he bent to peel off his socks, and she
ran the fingertips of one hand up the center of his bare back. 

He turned to look at her, green
eyes searching green eyes, and she gave him a tender, intimate smile.  “Hey
there, sailor,” she said.  “Going my way?”

“I could probably be convinced.” 
He stood to unfasten his jeans.  Reached out to turn off the lamp, and crawled
into bed and into her waiting arms.  “Hi,” he said.

“Hi.”

“That was quite a coup you pulled
off.”

“She’s something else, isn’t
she?”

“She is.”  He paused, unsure how
to approach this for fear of trampling on toes and starting something.  But
he’d instantly recognized the song his daughter was singing as his wife’s
work.  That knowledge had left a hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach. 
That, contrasted with his pride and elation, made him feel like he’d been run
through a blender set to
puree
.  “You wrote it,” he said.  “The song.”

“With a little help from Paige. 
She’s such a great kid.”

“You haven’t written anything
since Danny died.”

“I know.  But the minute I heard
her sing, I knew she had something special.  And for the first time in years, I
wanted to write again.” 

He was silent as she stroked the
muscles of his back.  So silent that, after a moment, she said, “Is everything
okay?”

Of course everything wasn’t
okay.  Four years he’d been working on his own.  Four years he’d felt as though
something inside him had died.  And now, he left her alone for a few weeks, and
this was what he came back to?

“I’m just surprised,” he said. 
“That you’re writing again.  After all this time.”

“It just bubbled up out of me,”
she said.  “You do realize the song was about me?  About us?”

“Was it?”

“I don’t think I realized it was,
at the time I wrote it.  Not consciously.  But my subconscious knew where it
was taking me, even if I didn’t.”

She didn’t have a clue.  And what
would be the point of enlightening her?  She was almost giddy with what she’d
regained.  It wouldn’t do any good to point out to her that he felt like
something she’d just flushed down the toilet.  Besides, in the end, he would
cave.  He always caved.  She won every argument.  Not because she was always
right, but because he loved her too much to not let her win.

And the thought of losing her,
ever, turned his insides into a tangled, bloody mess.

So he would set his feelings
aside and focus instead on Paige’s accomplishments.  That was easier.  Less
likely to lead to an atomic explosion and the start of World War III.

He adjusted position, lay his
head against her breast, and she tangled her fingers in his hair.  “I swear to
God,” he said softly, “I got goose bumps the minute she opened her mouth.  All
I could think about was what we could do with her.  How we could guide her and
shape her.  Help her build a career.  With a voice like that, and the two of us
behind her, she could be huge.”  He rubbed his thumb against her bare hip.  “Then
I came crashing back to earth and remembered that she might sing like she’s
been rode hard and put away wet, but she’s just fifteen, and she’s my little
girl, and it’s way too early to even think about a career.  I would never
subject a kid her age to that kind of life.  It would eat her alive.”

“Some parents do.”

“Not this parent.”

“I’m glad you feel that way.  She
acts so tough on the outside, but inside, she’s just a scared kid who doesn’t
know which way is up.”

“Why’d you end up picking a
family gathering for her coming-out party?”

“It was her idea.  She was too
scared to sing for you alone.  It was easier in a crowd.  You do realize she
did this for you?  That was the motivation behind it.  We worked on it for
weeks.  She may pretend she doesn’t care, but I’ve gotten to know her pretty
well, and I believe she desperately wants your approval.”

“Well, she’s got it.”

“You need to reinforce that,
every chance you get.  While you were away, I got to see a few cracks in that
hard shell of hers.”

“I’ll work on it.”

They lay, limp and drowsy, her
fingertips tracing formless patterns on his skin.  “I love it when you do
that,” he said.

“This?”

“Mmn.”

“And this?”

“That, too,” he said.  “You
tired?”

“A little.  You?”

“A little.  You feel good in your
birthday suit, Mrs. MacKenzie.”

“Mmn.  You, too.”

“You want to, um…?”

“Can I take a rain check?  Tomorrow? 
I’m more tired than I thought.”

“Yeah, of course.”  He kissed her
hip, pressed his cheek against her warm flesh.  “Tomorrow’s fine.”

“Love you.”

“I love you, too.”

He realized, after another
minute, that she’d fallen asleep.  With no other options, he tucked away the
hurt and the resentment, wrapped himself around her, and matched his breathing
to hers.

She was vacuuming the living room
when she found the cufflink. 

On her knees, with the vacuum
hose shoved deep under the couch to capture all the dust bunnies, she heard the
metallic clink as the machine sucked up something hard, then the high-pitched
whine that told her whatever it was had stalled in its journey. 

Casey toed the
off
switch,
waited for the machine to power down, then disconnected the hose to see what
was clogging her vacuum.  In the midst of a tangle of dog hair, dust, and a
single Froot Loop, she found the cufflink.  The square black onyx stone was
embedded with a solid-gold, diamond-studded “F” fashioned in fancy script.  She
took it in her hand, staring at it with incomprehension, absolutely certain
that she’d burned it, along with its mate and all Danny’s other possessions,
when she’d finally decided to exorcise him from her life.

Shaken, she closed her fist over
the cufflink even as she closed her eyes against the rush of memory that
assaulted her without warning. 

She’d bought them for him as a
tenth-anniversary gift.  Ten years prior, in a city hall in a small town in
Maryland, at rush hour on a weekday afternoon, they’d held hands and vowed to
cherish each other until death.  On this landmark tenth anniversary, they were
in London, where Danny was doing a series of shows, and as usual, he’d been
stuck in rehearsal for most of the day.  Katie’d had the sniffles, so she had
left their daughter with a hotel babysitter and, umbrella in hand, had ventured
out, following vague directions from the concierge, to find an anniversary gift
suitable for a man who had everything.

Ten years.  A milestone.  One
she’d doubted, a time or two, that they would ever see.  But after years of
struggling, they’d achieved a hard-won success, and their life, and their
marriage, had settled into an odd kind of normalcy.  Danny’s career had soared
to heights they’d never imagined.  Her career as a songwriter had brought her a
great deal of money and, more importantly, the recognition of her peers.  Then
there was Katie, her precious Katydid, a gift from God, the angel at the top of
her metaphorical Christmas tree.   Life was good.  Not perfect; Danny was
spending far too much time away from home, but that was a trade-off.  There
were always trade-offs.

Tonight, for instance, they’d be
celebrating their anniversary in the privacy of their hotel room before the
show, because it was so difficult for Danny to go out in public without being
mobbed.  But those were minor annoyances.  Overall, these were the best years
of their marriage.

She spent hours that afternoon
wandering the streets, from gift shop to department store, searching but
finding nothing suitable to commemorate the landmark occasion.  She’d just
about given up when she saw the antiques shop and decided to go inside.  Not to
find something for Danny—for what on earth would she find for Danny in an
antiques shop?—but to satisfy her own desire to poke around all those
wonderful, dusty antiques.

She spent a good half-hour just
wandering, undisturbed, amid trash and treasure, before approaching the glass
case that held antique and estate jewelry.  She leaned over the case, examining
hat pins and gaudy brooches.  Behind the case, the proprietor, short and
middle-aged and ruddy of face, gave her a wide smile and said in a lilting
Irish brogue, “Might there be anything special ye’d be looking for, Miss?”

That was when she spied the
cufflinks, lying on a white satin cloth inside the case.  Elegant, unique, and
monogrammed with an “F” for Fiore.  A bit pretentious, but she knew instantly
that Danny would love them.  Somehow, he’d come to the conclusion that his
self-worth could be measured by money and possessions, and she’d never had the
heart to tell him he was wrong.  “Those,” she said, pointing.  “The cufflinks. 
May I look at them?”

“Aye,” he said.  “An American.” 
He slid open the case and took out the cufflinks.  “These came from an estate
sale in Yorkshire.  They’re very old.  Would ye be buying them for yerself?”

She picked one up, felt its
coolness, its heft.  “For my husband.  It’s our tenth anniversary.”

“Ah!  Yer husband obviously likes
pretty things.  A man after me own heart.  After all, look at the pretty girl
he married.  Will ye be buying them, then?  Shall I wrap ‘em for ye?”

“Yes.  Please.”

She left the shop feeling a sense
of satisfaction.  Danny was so hard to shop for.  His tastes were very
specific, and he didn’t lack for anything.  He made a lot of money, and he
liked to spend it.  As a result, it had grown increasingly difficult to find a
meaningful gift that he either didn’t already have or couldn’t just buy for
himself.  But she felt confident that she’d found the one item in the entire
city of London that was perfect for him.

Casey returned to the hotel,
feeling almost giddy.  Katie was napping in her room, attended by the babysitter
who was watching daytime television with the volume turned low.  Danny was
still at rehearsal, so she called room service to order their dinner, then took
a shower and changed into the dress she’d bought for the occasion.  The
Cheongsam style dress, with its keyhole neckline, was fashioned of a jade-green
silk Asian print almost precisely the color of her eyes.  It hugged her body,
accentuating her curves, its split skirt highlighting her legs.  Checking
herself in the mirror, she decided she looked damn good for a woman who’d
graduated from high school a decade earlier.  She’d done a lot of living in
those ten years, but none of it showed on the outside.  The scars were all on
the inside.

She checked the clock.  Danny was
running late.  What else was new?  He finally came in, gave her a quick kiss,
and headed for the shower.  “I’m sorry I’m late,” he said.  “The sound check
took forever.  The acoustics in that place are a nightmare.”

“I ordered dinner.  It should be
here any minute.”

“Oh, Christ.”  He paused, and she
saw regret in those blue eyes.  “I hate to do this to you,
carissima
,
but I don’t think I dare to eat anything before the show.  Maybe later?”

And he disappeared into the
bathroom.

While he was in there, room
service arrived.  The waiter wheeled in the cart, and she signed for the meal,
giving him a generous tip.  Then she went into Katie’s room and dismissed the
babysitter.  If they weren’t having the candlelight dinner she’d planned, it
was pointless to pay somebody to watch over their daughter.

When Danny came back, dressed for
the concert, they exchanged gifts.  He loved the cufflinks, just as she’d known
he would.  After admiring them, he kissed her and asked, “Where did you find
these?”

 “In a little antiques shop here
in London.  I saw them and knew they’d just been sitting there, waiting for me
to discover them.  Waiting for you.”

His gift to her was an exquisite,
five-carat, princess-cut diamond necklace.  She stood before the mirror,
staring at her reflection, while behind her, his warm fingers fumbled with the
clasp.  The single stone fell, cold and hard, into the hollow between her
breasts.  She caught it in her hand, adjusted it until it faced frontward. 
“There,” he said, his breath warm on her bare shoulder.  “It looks beautiful on
you.”