Days Like This (35 page)

She studied her mirror image with
a critical eye.  The necklace was all wrong for her.  The stone was too big,
too flashy.  After ten years, he still didn’t understand that big and flashy
were words that didn’t belong in the same sentence with the name
Casey
Bradley Fiore
.  But she would wear it, would cherish it, because she loved
him and he’d given it to her.

After all those years, the couple
reflected in the mirror still looked good together.  A slender, petite,
pretty—some would say beautiful—dark-haired woman.  An achingly handsome
blue-eyed man whose tawny hair fell in a neat line past his collar to his
shoulders.  He took her breath away.  He had since the first moment she lay
eyes on him, ten years earlier, standing in the kitchen of the house she’d
grown up in, this handsome stranger, this unknown singer from Boston who had
huge ambitions and was determined that she would write for him.  She’d walked
away from her life, her fiancé, her family, to be with him.  It hadn’t been all
sunshine and roses.  Rivers of darkness ran through her marriage.  But she
loved him, and she’d stood by him through it all.  They had a beautiful
daughter, successful careers, more money than they would ever know what to do
with.  A charmed life. And she had no regrets.  She kept reminding herself that
she had no regrets.

They each drank a single flute of
champagne before Rob knocked on the door to tell Danny that the limo had
arrived to take them to the venue.  They’d certainly come a long way from the
creaky old converted buses they’d started touring in.  Immediately distracted,
already someplace she couldn’t follow him, Danny left her standing there with
Rob and went into the bedroom to say goodnight to his daughter.

In the foyer of the hotel suite,
Rob stood awkwardly, hands in his pockets, jingling loose change.  He finally
said, “If I may be so bold as to say so, Fiore, you are one hot ticket in that
dress.”

Danny hadn’t said a word about
the dress.  She wasn’t sure he’d even noticed it.  Tears scalded her eyelids. 
She blinked them back.  “Thank you,” she said.  “Thank you for noticing.”

He studied her from beneath
lowered eyelids.  “Are you okay?”

“Of course I’m okay.  It’s my
anniversary.  Ten years.  A milestone.  You have to be okay on your
anniversary.  It’s a law of the universe.  I’m sure it must be written down
somewhere.”

Before he could respond, Danny
blew back through, pausing to give her a quick, husbandly peck on the cheek. 
“Later,” he said.  “I promise I’ll make it up to you later.”

She knew he would make the
effort.  Danny might not always get it right, but he did try.  She straightened
his collar.  “I know you will, darling.”

And he was gone, sprinting down
the corridor toward the elevator.  For a long moment, she and Rob studied each
other.  He opened his mouth to speak.

“Don’t say it,” she warned him.

He clamped his mouth shut.  Took
a step closer, brushed a tear from her cheek.  And whispered in her ear,
“Smoking hot.  Happy anniversary, kiddo.”

Seven years later and a lifetime
away from that London hotel room, kneeling on her living room floor beside her
vacuum cleaner, Casey frowned at the cufflink in her hand.  Why was it he could
still get to her?  Even now, with the way she felt about Rob, Danny could still
get to her.  Would it be this way for the rest of her life?  He’d left her with
so many scars, scars that were still raw, buried deep inside her.  And certain
memories could still rip her heart from her chest.

Trying to stem the flow of tears,
she glanced around the room.  “Are you here somewhere?” she demanded.  “Did you
do this deliberately, to stir things up?”  She brushed furiously at a tear,
shoved the cufflink into her pocket.  “When are you ever going to let go of me,
Danny?”  Picking up the vacuum cleaner hose, she struggled for a moment to
reattach it.  Then she stood and took a hard breath.  “For God’s sake,” she
whispered, “leave me alone.”

And she turned the vacuum back
on.

“What’s this?” he said.

Half-buried in the freezer in
search of something to make for lunch, Casey paused, leaned back and turned to
see the object he held in his hand.  “It’s a cufflink.”

He raised an eyebrow, turned the
object on its side.  “I can see that.  But whose?”

“It was Danny’s.”  She snatched
it away from him and pocketed it before he could get a better look.

He squared his jaw.  “I thought
you got rid of all Danny’s stuff.”

She returned to searching the
freezer.  From behind the door, she said, “I did.”

“Then where’d it come from?”

She slowly emerged from behind
the freezer door and gazed at him impassively.  “I don’t have a clue.  I found
it this morning when I was vacuuming.  Why are you giving me the third degree?”

“I’m not.  I’m just asking.”

“Well, I don’t have a crystal
ball.  Maybe Leroy fished it out from under the refrigerator.  Are you planning
to make a federal case out of it?”

A smart man knew when to shut
up.  He wasn’t sure he qualified for that designation, but he clamped his mouth
shut anyway.  “No, ma’am,” he said.

She gave him the Death Glare. 
Slowly closed the freezer door.  And said, “I’m not feeling well.  I think I’ll
go upstairs and lie down.  I trust that the two of you can manage lunch on your
own.”  And she left him standing there in the kitchen with his mouth hanging
open. 

Across the room, his daughter
said, “Feisty one, isn’t she?”

“Wipe that smirk off your face or
I’ll make you cook.”

Paige arranged her face into a
somber mask, but the amusement was still there in her eyes.  “I thought you
liked my cooking.”

“Did I miss something crucial? 
Because I don’t know who that woman is.  Was there some memo I was supposed to
get?  Did the rules of the game change while I was away, only nobody bothered
to tell me?”

“Maybe we should just…you know.” 
At his probing look, she shrugged.  “Get lunch?”

“Hold that thought.  I’ll be back.”

He found his wife upstairs, flat
on the bed, fists clenched tightly and a damp washcloth draped across her
eyes.  He sat gingerly on the edge of the mattress and said softly, “Headache?”

“I’m fine.”

“You don’t look fine.”  What she
looked was pale.  Ashen.  Concerned, he brushed his knuckles across her cheek. 
“You look like crap.”

“Thank you, Doctor MacKenzie, for
that ego-boosting analysis.”

“You know what I meant.  Maybe
you’re coming down with something.”

“I’m tired!” she snapped.  “Am I
not allowed to be tired?”  A tear trickled from beneath the washcloth. 

What the hell was going on here? 
Where was his sweet and stoic wife, and who was this weeping and witchy woman? 
“You’re always tired lately,” he said.  “I’m worried about you.  Maybe you
should see your doctor.  There could be something wrong with—”

“For the love of God,
MacKenzie—”  She tore the washcloth from her face to glower at him, and
something she’d been clutching in her fist dropped to the mattress.  “Will you
stop hovering over me and just leave me the hell alone?”

He stared in bewilderment at the
cufflink she’d just dropped.  Danny’s cufflink.  The one she’d been clutching
so tightly while she lay crying on the bed.  Their bed.  His and hers.  The one
place in this house where Daniel No-Middle-Name Fiore had no business showing
his pretty-boy face. 

He squared his jaw.  “Fine,” he
said.

“Fine,” she said.  With a last
dour glance, she picked up the cuff link, draped the cloth back over her eyes,
and rolled onto her side.  Away from him.

For a full ten seconds, he stared
at her back, that solid wall of
leave-me-alone
, while a jumble of
emotions roiled around inside him.  Then he got up from the bed and did what
she wanted.

He left her the hell alone.

Her father had this thing he did
with his jaw that clearly signaled his mood to anybody with a functioning
brain.  She should know; she had the same habit.  It was a little freaky, the
way their body language was so similar.  Clear evidence of nature trumping
nurture.  When Dear Old Dad came back downstairs, he was doing the clenched jaw
thing, and Paige wasn’t sure whether to run or offer sympathy. 

She opted for somewhere in the
middle.  Neutral territory, like Switzerland, or Rhode Island.  Clearing her
throat, she said, “Casey okay?”

His brows drew together in a
thunderous expression, and for an instant, she regretted saying anything.  Then
he relaxed, shrugged his shoulders.  “She says she is, but you couldn’t prove
it by me.  Listen, I’m not in the mood to cook.  What do you say we blow this
Popsicle stand and find something to eat in town?”

“In town” meant one of three
options:  the Jackson Diner, the pizza and sandwich shop inside the bowling
alley, or Lola’s, which specialized in thick and juicy steaks, a fully-stocked
bar, and karaoke on Friday and Saturday nights.  Slim pickings by anyone’s
standards.  No dim sum, no plump and cheesy burritos, no handmade gelato.  On
the other hand, food was food, and she knew her father well enough by now to
recognize that he wasn’t quite as nutrition-conscious as his wife.  Whatever
she chose, he’d be amenable, and he wouldn’t remind her that she hadn’t yet
eaten her daily allotment of leafy green vegetables.  There were advantages to
having an old man who, when he wasn’t being a flaming ass, was laid back and
flexible. 

“Sounds good to me,” she said.

They took the Porsche, which was
okay with her, as there was a certain coolness factor attached to riding in a
snazzy black sports car, in spite of that ridiculous and egotistical license
plate.  When his wife wasn’t around, Rob MacKenzie didn’t drive like a sedate,
responsible adult.  He drove that powerful car a little too fast, a little too
aggressively.  As if he, and he alone, owned the road.  A Boston driver to the
hilt.  And for some crazy reason, that felt right.  He did insist on seat
belts, which was a little dorky, but the truth was that she felt safer wearing
the thing, so she only rolled her eyes a little as she locked it around her,
then forgot it was supposed to be uncool.  Dead was pretty uncool, too.

He fiddled with the radio, found
an oldies station, blasted something ancient at a death-defying volume. 
Something about a chick named Sloopy.  Or maybe it was a dog named Snoopy. 
Either way, it was pretty lame.

He lowered the volume a few
hundred decibels.  “We used to play this,” he said, “back in the day.”

“Hunh.”

“Your mom always came to our gigs
wearing this cute little miniskirt thingy.  Black leather.  With knee-high
boots.  Legs up to—”  He glanced at her from the corner of his eye.  Cleared
his throat.  “Let’s just say she was pretty hot.”

 “Really.”

“And—”  He reached for the radio
dial, ratcheted it back up a notch.  “I used to sneak her into the clubs
through the back door, because she didn’t have an I.D. and couldn’t get in the
front.”

She raised her eyebrows.  “My
mom?” she said.  “My mom snuck into bars because she wasn’t old enough to
drink?”  She tried to picture her staid, respectable mother doing anything even
remotely illegal, but she couldn’t wrap her mind around it.

“Oh, she was old enough.  The
drinking age was eighteen then.  But she didn’t have a driver’s license, and
her folks wouldn’t allow her to get a state I.D.”

“But if she was of age, why did
they have any say in what she did?”

“Trust me, nobody dared to cross
her mother.  So where do you want to eat?”  He stopped for the town’s lone
traffic light, revved the engine impatiently, probably not even aware of what
he was doing.

“Anything but bowling-alley
pizza.  Please God.”

He turned his head, studied her. 
“If you could have anything you wanted, anything at all, the hell with
geography, money no object…what would it be?”

“McDonald’s French fries.”  She
sighed dramatically.  “I would kill for McDonald’s French fries.”

Still revving the engine, he
nodded slowly and said, “Best fries on the planet.”

She turned her head, and they
studied each other for a long moment.  “Good to know we agree on something.”

The light turned green.  He
clicked his blinker and cut a hard left.  “Well, then, sugar plum,” he said,
“we are getting us some of those McDonald’s fries.”

The kid had a certain charm about
her, he thought as he watched her eat the last of her fries.  It was an edgy,
Boston-street-kid kind of charm, but charm nevertheless.  “So,” he said, taking
a sip of Coke, “I really don’t know that much about you.  What makes Paige
MacKenzie tick?”

She cocked her head to one side,
that mop of blond curls, so like his own, falling all around her.  “Why would
you want to know?”

In his best, deeply resonant
Darth Vader voice, he said, “Paige, I am your father.”  When she just looked at
him blankly, he said, “Tell me you’ve seen the
Star Wars
movies.”

“Um…no.”

“A travesty.  One we’ll be
rectifying as quickly as possible.”

She shrugged.  “They’re guy
flicks.”

He clutched at his chest as if in
terrible pain.  “Tell me you didn’t just say that.  They are, collectively, the
greatest movies of all time.”

“Yeah?  Have you talked to your
wife about that?  Because she seems to believe that honor should be evenly
split between
Gone With the Wind
and
The King and I
.”

He snorted and said, “Chick
flicks.  As God is my witness—”  He met her eyes, saw the humor there.  And
they finished the line together:  “I’ll never be hungry again.”

That pulled an actual grin from
her.  A brief one, but a grin nevertheless.  “Look,” he said, “I’m your
father.  Don’t you think it’s time we got acquainted with each other?”