One More Time (43 page)

If she intended to give everyone in the room something to think about, she certainly succeeded.

“Details!” Maralys hissed as James followed his mother. “Get us the scoop!”

“We want to know who it is,” Philippa agreed.

“You’re a nosy bunch,” James teased, then winked. Maralys chucked a napkin at him and he laughed. “I’ll see what I can do.” He showed little resemblance to the courtroom shark Leslie had always believed him to be. She looked around the table, wondering how much else she didn’t know about these people who had been part of her life for almost twenty years.

And she resolved to find out.

She found Matt’s gaze upon her again and smiled at him. “Maybe we should get going, too, as it’s a school night. I’ll just give Maralys a hand with the dishes first.”

“We all will,” Matt said and rose from the table.

* * *

The dishes were done quickly, so many hands making light work, then Matt and Leslie and Annette were in the Subaru, heading home. Matt was keenly aware of his wife’s presence and he couldn’t help but think of that night a few weeks before, when the atmosphere in the car had been almost toxic.

Tonight it was filled with promise. Magical.

Of course, there were two dogs in the back seat as well, which made the car seem particularly crowded.

“Jimmy is such a pig,” Annette ranted in the back seat. “I can’t believe how he thinks he’s so hot. No one in my school would even give him the time of day—”

Leslie put her hand on Matt’s thigh and his heart stopped. He was still getting used to her taking the initiative: it shocked him and excited him both. He turned a corner, then closed his hand over hers. In his peripheral vision, he saw her smile.

“I was thinking,” she said softly, so softly that Annette’s rant flowed uninterrupted. “I was thinking that your toes must be black and blue.”

Matt couldn’t make sense of that, so he waited.

“From tripping over the furniture in the living room,” she said quietly. “I don’t know how you find the couch every night.”

Matt grinned. “I don’t. I just fall and sleep wherever I land.”

Leslie laughed, causing Annette to fall silent.

“What are you two whispering about now?”

“Nothing that concerns you,” Matt said.

Annette flung herself against the back seat. “SEX. You’re talking about sex. I seriously don’t want to know anything about you two having sex. Parents shouldn’t be allowed to do that. It’s like so
gross
.”

Matt nearly stalled the car in his shock, which would have been a trick given that it was an automatic. “Excuse me?” he said finally, and Leslie laughed as if she’d never stop.

“Be gentle with your father, Annette,” she said when she caught her breath. “Dads never want to know that their daughters have even heard of sex.”

“You can say that again,” Matt grumbled.

“Besides, he doesn’t even know about Scott Sexton—”

“I told you that in confidence!” Annette cried. “I should never have trusted you. I should never have told you.” She settled into a rant while Matt focused on driving.

He heard Leslie laughing softly, then she leaned closer. “At least you weren’t part of the expedition to buy her a vibrator,” she whispered.

The car swerved. Matt couldn’t help it. “This is seriously more than I want to know.” He shook a finger at Annette in the rearview mirror, knowing he was foolish to be surprised. “You’re not allowed to grow up. You hear me?”

She tossed her hair. “As if.” She sat back and sighed theatrically, then grinned at him. “Don’t worry, Dad. I’m not stupid.”

“I know. You’re smart enough to be careful and to ask questions when you need to.”

“Well, yeah, but I do have some reference materials.”

Matt slanted a glance at his wife, primary source of reference materials, and found her smiling a Cheshire smile. She undid the top button of her blouse and slid her finger down her chest, parting her clothes. She watched him, still smiling, her gaze heated. Matt saw the creamy slice of her skin, then the lacey edge of a bra.

It was black. That was all he needed to know.

It was the invitation he’d been waiting for, and he didn’t intend to decline with regrets. He squeezed her hand, still trapped within his, and Leslie squeezed his back.

It was indisputable that he drove home a bit faster than he’d initially planned.

* * *

Runt dunt dada dadala dunt da.

Leslie finds herself on the end of a tightrope. Her father is there, but remarkably silent. The crowd murmurs as the barker’s cry fades. All proceeds as it has a dozen times, until her father tries to hand her a box.

“No, thank you,” Leslie says, to his obvious astonishment. “I’ll have a pink parasol instead.”

And suddenly there is a pink parasol, leaning against the wall o the big top, just a few paces away. It’s frilly and feminine and precisely the way she has always imagined she’d want a pink parasol to be. It is precisely the parasol that she always expects her father to hand to her in this dream, the one she expects when she gets a box instead.

Has it been there all along?

Or did it manifest only after she dared to voice her desire? What came first: the parasol or the request? Leslie doesn’t know and the dream doesn’t allow her much time to consider the philosophical ramifications of the parasol’s existence. Her father, with a familiar grunt of disapproval, gets the parasol and hands it to her.

“Careful what you ask for, lass,” he says, with a bright glance. “Lest you get it when you’re least expecting it.”

And Leslie sees with painful clarity that her father was afraid to ask for anything for himself. She can’t teach him this lesson or give him this gift: it is her parasol and her journey across the wire and she can only provide an example.

She smiles and gives him a kiss farewell, the one she never gave him in real life, then turns and steps out onto the wire. She is jubilant, triumphant, her parasol held high, her steps proud and confident.

She walks like a woman who knows what she wants and isn’t afraid to ask for it. She sees a little girl in the front row, far far below, and on impulse, casts her parasol down to the little girl. She waits until the little girl catches it, until the little girls’ face lights with joy and the crowd cheers.

Then Leslie leaps off the tightrope and flies with the greatest of ease.

Without a trapeze.

When the crowd disappears and the floor of the tent drops down down down, Leslie swoops low, toward the eternal fires burning far below. To her astonishment, the letters they form don’t make the word FAILURE.

She sees the word emblazoned against the darkness, the last message she would have expected to see. She reads it again, then laughs out loud and soars high once more.

GO FOR IT is what the letters urge.

Leslie awakened smiling in the cool darkness of the morning. The house was quiet, as was the street outside, but someone somewhere was whimpering.

It was a poodle dream.

Leslie nestled deep into the covers, content in so many ways that she’d lost track. It was early, too early to be awake, but she was filled with such optimism from her dream that she knew she wouldn’t sleep again. She snuggled closer to Matt’s warmth and recalled every detail that she could before the dream completely faded.

her strongest memory was of how wonderful it had felt to fly. How simple it was. How elegant and effortless and joyous. She yearned already to do it again.

She also felt a confidence that was new to her, another gift from the dream. Leslie now had a curious conviction that her job would work out just fine, that she had been offered the job because she had wanted it.

No, because she had wanted it and she had dared to ask for it.

It was hard not to love the idea of living in Grey Gables, a house the like of which Leslie had only dreamed about in the past. She liked the idea of Beverly not living alone, too. Annette loved the idea of living with the girls for perpetuity. The house was everything Leslie had ever wanted, and was coming to them in a way that she never could have anticipated.

A little bonus prize from the universe for believing.

Matt had said that he would make his office in another room than his father’s study, but it was clear that he had good feelings about returning to his childhood home.

And Annette would learn to drive the Jag.

It was a perfect solution. Mrs. Beaton would have new neighbors to worry about, but Leslie decided she could live with that.

Matt’s book would sell, Leslie believed, or if it didn’t, his next one would. She knew with quiet certainty on that drowsy Saturday morning that he would be fine, that he would recover from the shock of that gruesome discovery, because he had reached out to all of them for help. He was strong and resilient and he would demand honesty from himself.

And he had a support network to please the most demanding therapist. There was Leslie and Annette and Beverly and the girls, but even more than that, Matt’s siblings seemed more intent on being close than they ever had been.

They even had fun together.

She watched Matt sleep and felt blessed as she hadn’t in years. She was profoundly grateful for a second chance to make her marriage come right. Leslie knew as she watched the sky lighten that she would never have her recurring dream again. In a way, that was sad.

But, in another way, it wasn’t sad at all.

* * * * * * * * *

 Ready for more of the Coxwells?

Read on for a taste of

All Or Nothing

The fourth book in the Coxwell series and Zach’s story.

Book 4 in the Coxwell Series

Some people will do anything for true love—even if they have to fake it.

Jen Maitland had no use for handsome guys with easy charm—until she met Zach. He’s the perfect fake date to end her mother’s matchmaking scheme before it starts. Besides, he’d probably just use her and leave her like her ex-fiancé did. At least that’s what Jen tells herself. The only problem is that Zach isn’t as predictable as he appears...

Zach Coxwell hates commitment, but loves a challenge. Like the pretty bar waitress who turned him down flat for a date—only to invite him to her family’s Thanksgiving dinner. Zach knows he can make Jen smile—and he’s betting that he can unravel her mysteries—even if he has to do it over candied yams.

A tofu turkey, a sister who threatens to have Zach’s love-child, the untimely appearance of a knitted avocado—and Zach’s discovery of her real motive—combine to turn Thanksgiving dinner into Jen’s worst nightmare. Zach, on the other hand, has the time of his life. And when he makes Jen smile, he finally finds a commitment he’s willing to make... but persuading Jen to believe him will take everything he’s got.

Chapter One

“A
re you gay?”

Jen glanced up from her toast. It was just before noon on a Friday morning and she’d thought herself alone in her mother’s vivid yellow and cherry red kitchen. She had been considering the problem of how to knit the skin of an avocado so that it looked real, but any internal debate about the pebbly merit of moss stitch would have to wait.

Her mom, as bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as Jen was not, was leaning in the doorway to the hall. Natalie had “that look”, the one that meant trouble.

A casual observer wouldn’t have guessed that Natalie and Jen were related, much less that they were mother and daughter. While Jen was tall and slender with cropped dark hair, her mother was petite, curvy and possessed of what seemed to be several acres of corkscrew-curled auburn hair.

Jen’s mother had found her niche in the 1970’s and had decided to remain there for good. Natalie wore little round glasses, her jeans were worn, her sweater was hand knit (by Gran) and old enough to be embellished with many fuzz balls. She wore Birkenstock sandals all year around, baked the best whole grain bread, and persisted in starting earnest conversations with her children at unpredictable moments.

Jen had forgotten the earnest conversation bit when she’d accepted the chance to move back home two years before. She’d worked a double shift the night before at Mulligan’s, was due in for the lunch shift today and her feet were still begging for mercy. She wasn’t really up for having her soul searched, her chakras aligned, or the fiber content of her diet analyzed.

Again.

Jen tried not to show any of her frustration. She changed the subject instead of answering, a ploy that sometimes worked. “Hi Mom. The bread is really good this time.”

“Don’t you do that to me,” Natalie said as she advanced into the kitchen. “I know you well enough to see you putting your shields up. I want you to be honest with me, Jen.”

“I’m not putting...”

“You
are
. I can see you closing off the world. You’ve always done it, but now you’re better at it.”

Jen didn’t know what to say to that so she ate her toast. She toyed with her knitting while she did so. It flopped on the table, not looking like much of anything since it wasn’t yet stuffed. The pit of the avocado was done, because her plan was that the end result would look like an avocado cut in half. The round pit had been the easiest place to start. So, she had a purple golf ball with floppy frills around it and a lot of doubt.