Skinny Dipping (28 page)

“Whew! I’m sweatier than a used towel in a Turkish steam bath!” Mimi called up the stairs.

Pleased with the colorful analogy designed specifically to make Joe wince, Mimi slapped the snow from her jeans and toed off her cross-country boots. She’d entered through the walk-out level under the deck, currently beyond Joe’s scope and therefore not subject to his housekeeperly criticism. She started shedding outerwear with little regard for where it fell. Outside, the dogs lay panting in the snow. Experience told her they wouldn’t be asking to come in for at least half an hour.

“Yoo-hoo! Joe? You’re not sulking again, are you? The doc said you could put weight on that knee tomorrow. Then maybe I’ll let you lean on me and we’ll walk around the garage.”

It had been four days since Joe had gone aerial, and since then he was getting grumpier by the hour. Unused to being physically inert and even more unused to depending on anyone for anything, he was having a hard time adjusting. Well, he couldn’t be any more unused to depending on someone than she was having someone depend on her. And now she had four beings looking to her for food, exercise, companionship, and conversation.

This last had the most unexpected outcome. Not because of how much she had learned about Joe—she was a tele-medium, for chrissakes; her stock-in-trade was listening—but because in the course of their conversations Mimi had revealed more about herself to Joe than she had revealed to any half dozen people in as many years. And it had begun with that stupid package from Otell Weber.

The contents had been mostly Xeroxes of handwritten notes, but the upshot was that Otell had discovered a very faint trail to pursue. He warned her not to get her hopes up and, surprisingly, they weren’t. She wasn’t reacting at all like she’d expected; she was too busy taking care of Mr. Clean and the Dustmops. She tugged off her ski pants, disconcerted by how much she looked forward to verbal sparring with Joe, suspecting it was just a substitute for another type of heated encounter.

Joe was dangerous. Sometimes she found her heart doing stupid little pitter-pats when he made some sly observation designed to make her laugh or she caught him watching her or when he rolled his shirtsleeves up over those fabulous forearms. There should—
would
, she corrected herself—be no romantic relationship in their future. Sadly, they knew each other too well now.

She could see how it would play out. They’d enjoy the affair but after it was over they’d wonder about each other, feel like maybe a follow-up affair would be polite. Worry that one or the other had become more attached or, worse, less attached. Make a terrible error in judgment and phone, get his voice mail, hang up, and later that night wake up wondering whether her own phone number had shown up on his caller ID and whether he’d seen it and thought, “Thank God I ducked that call!” It would be horrible.

But that was the future that wasn’t going to happen. Right now was right now and she wondered why Joe wasn’t haranguing her about bringing snow into the house. Was he asleep? Was he waiting for her? Would he greet her with the heart-stopping smile she got when she reappeared after even a short absence?

By the time she’d finished tugging on her jeans, her heart was doing a calypso of anticipation. She decided to take a leaf from her own book and let it dance. No harm in a little heart dance. Good for the cardio-vas system. She took the stairs two at a time. “Tell you what, Joe. We’ll lug your wheelchair into Fawn Creek for dinner…”

Prescott Tierney sat in a wheelchair by the window overlooking the lake.

“Prescott! When did you get here? Why didn’t you say something…?” She trailed off, becoming aware of his sullen, guarded expression. His hands were crossed tightly in his lap, his hair disheveled. The shoulder of his black T-shirt was ripped. “Where’s Joe?”

“Here.”

She turned at a sound. Joe sat in his wheelchair at the other end of the bank of windows, trying unsuccessfully to look natural, his lack of success due in large part to the shiner blooming around his left eye.

“Hello, Mimi,” Joe said conversationally. “How was the snow today?”

“Screw the snow. What the hell happened to you?”

“A little accident. Prescott and I had a slight disagreement and—”

“You hit your father?”
Mimi spun around and faced Prescott again, ambushed by her own unexpected anger.

“No!” both Tierney males said in unison. Her anger receded.

“No,” Joe repeated. “We fell out of our wheelchairs and…ah, I grabbed a table leg. It teetered and the book on it slid off and hit me in the eye.”

“And yet, still I have questions,” Mimi murmured dryly.

“I tried to hit him,” Prescott put in abruptly. The anger flared again, but this time Mimi was prepared for it. Whatever happened between Joe and Prescott was no concern of hers.

“He did.” Amazingly, Joe seemed proud of this.

“I could have, too, after the book hit him. But I didn’t want to lower myself.”

“
Why
did you try to hit your father?” Mimi asked Prescott.

“He said terrible things about you.”

It probably said something about how her and Joe’s relationship had progressed over the last few days that Mimi didn’t at once suspect that Joe had warned Prescott she was out to take him for every penny. Not at once. It took a few seconds.

It probably said more about their relationship that, a few seconds later, she decided Joe wouldn’t have warned Prescott of this because just yesterday Joe had admitted he’d misjudged her, saying that she was too lazy to try to con anyone. She suspected she was supposed to be embarrassed by his assessment. She wasn’t.

“What did he say?” she asked Prescott.

“He said you were a slob. That you were irresponsible.”

Mimi snorted. Prescott looked shocked. “Compared to him? Yeah, me and the rest of the world.”

Prescott frowned. “He said you were undisciplined and stubborn.”

“I did not say stubborn,” Joe piped in. “One has to take a stand to be stubborn.”

“Ouch,” Mimi said. “To the rest I plead guilty as charged. Now, does anyone want some pop?”

She could see how disappointed Prescott was. He’d been expecting her to demand he and his father meet with pistols at dawn, and she was suggesting Diet Coke.
Poor
Prescott. He didn’t know her at all. Not like Joe did.

“He said you were so mentally lazy you might as well be asleep,” Prescott said, his voice rising.

Mimi, halfway to the kitchen, stopped. “Now, that stings,” she admitted. “And it’s unfair. I do the hardest Sudokus in
Sudoku Master Magazine without penciling in any numbers.
”

“Wow. Notify the Nobel Prize committee,” Joe said.

“I think it’s great,” Prescott said. “Really great.”

She shot Prescott a look. She knew when she was being patronized. “I do other stuff, too,” she said primly. “I set up the interface for my plasma television, DVD recorder, and cable system myself.”

Prescott attempted to look impressed. Joe made a point of studying the buff on his manicured nails.

She’d never had to convince anyone of her intelligence before. It felt very weird. “Look. I’m not going to argue about this. I’ll get you guys some pop; then I’m going back to Chez Ducky to sit in my usual blissful stupor.”

“Wait,” Prescott said. “You mean you don’t stay here?”

“Nope. No reason to.” She didn’t add that there were also some very good reasons
not
to, primary of those being that as Joe grew more physically comfortable, she grew more physically uncomfortable.

She’d never been so tempted to fall into bed with a guy, and never had her self-preservation warning signals been flashing so brightly. She didn’t know why this should be. She’d had wonderful short-term affairs before and no one had gotten hurt. (Correction. No one that she knew of. As a rule, she didn’t make follow-up calls.)

“But what about the dogs?” Prescott asked lamely.

“I come over in the morning, take care of the dogs, and at dinnertime I make sure everyone gets something to eat. Including Joe. An admittedly mindless way of spending the day, but the dogs seem to appreciate it.”

“You’re not really going to leave me here with him?” Prescott asked, giving her a gooey look of adulation.

Joe straightened up at this. “What’s wrong with me?”

“What’s right with you?” Prescott snapped back. “You’re ruining everything by being here. Go away.”

The hurt occasioning his words caused an unpleasant sensation to burrow toward Mimi’s heart. She disliked this treacherous feeling. Prescott and his ilk were in large part responsible for Chez Ducky’s looming end. If people like him didn’t build monsters like this place on every splotch of land with water near it, the Chez Ducky property wouldn’t be worth a fortune and the idea of selling it would never even have arisen. Things could go on forever just as they had.

On the other hand, he sounded so damn young.

Joe must have thought so, too, because he didn’t take offense. “I was just trying to help.”

The unpleasant sensation by her heart blossomed into an all-out ache. Joe sounded so damn sad.

“Stop trying.
It’s too late
,” Prescott declared and with a jerk of his hand twirled his wheelchair dramatically away from his father. Unfortunately he overshot the mark, sending the wheelchair into a spin that ended with him crashing into the wall.

“Are you okay?” Joe asked worriedly, wheeling closer.

“Screw you!” Prescott yelled, red faced with embarrassment.

More emotions spilled like some corrosive acid onto Mimi’s Teflon-coated heart. She could damn near smell the thing smoking.

Mimi stared horrified, not at the yelling going on but at herself and what she realized she was going to do. She was going to insert herself square into the middle of this family drama, and she wasn’t exactly sure why or how to keep herself from doing so. But she could not stand to see these two hurting each other so unnecessarily.

“Fine, Prescott,” Joe said tightly. “I’ll—”

“Both of you, shut up!” And there it was. She was in. As in “
in
volved.” Both men looked at her dumbly. The jerks had forgotten she was there.

“Shut up and stay shut up until I get back.”

“Where are you going?”

“First, to let the dogs in. Second, to the kitchen to get some wine. Then you two are going to sit on opposite sides of this room and talk or I am leaving you here alone, at the mercy of the dogs.
And
Bill’s lower gastrointestinal system.”

They shut up.

As Mimi rummaged in the cupboards for something that went with wine, her cell phone rang, startling her into spilling a glass of the sublime Whitehall Lane cabernet sauvignon on the granite island. It dripped over the edge and onto the tiled floor. She swore. Whitehall Lane’s 2002 was simply too good to spill, not to mention too good to be lapped up by the likes of Bill. She snatched up the phone. “Hello.”

“Mimi? Is that you?”

“Well, it isn’t your aunt Irene, Ozzie,” Mimi said, kneeling down with a towel to wipe up the wine. Bill spied her and propelled himself across the living room at the towel, grabbing the end and jerking, growling deep in his throat. He was not playing. Bill did not play. For days, Bill had laid in wait for something to savage. Since Joe’s arrival, towels, shoes, and other loose articles of clothing were in short supply. “Hold on a sec.”

Mimi wrenched at the towel in Bill’s mouth. Bill did not let go. The towel—another towel—ripped in half. She released her half and Bill shot away snarling in victory. No sense fighting over a torn rag. She got to her feet.

“You’re not going to let him run around the house with that wine-soaked rag, are you?” Prescott asked in shock.

“She is,” Joe answered with weary resignation.

“Do you mind? I am on the phone!” she said, holding her hand over the mouthpiece. She lifted the cell to her ear. “What’s up, Ozzie?”

“Who’s that?” Ozzie asked curiously.

“My neighbors.”

“Neighbors? I thought you were going to Chez Ducky to commiserate with the spirits of your ancestors.”

Actually she’d said, “to blow the stink off the place,” but Ozzie, who staunchly believed in dressing things up, had edited. “Yes. I thought so, too. Plans changed.”

“Since when do you
plan
anything?” he asked.

Ozzie was obviously stalling, and Mimi had to get back to Prescott and Joe, who, along with Bill, were doing a fair reenactment of the Pamplona Running of the Bulls. Prescott and Joe had taken on the roles of the bulls and were skittering around the hardwood floors in their wheelchairs pursuing Bill as the Intrepid Runner, whose rag seemed to be acting as a cape.

“True, Ozzie, but lately the small tributary that is my life has wandered into a little backwater. Until the tide comes up again, I’m stranded here. Now, again. What’s up?”

He took a deep breath. “I know this is way out of line and that you are on vacation, but I figured since you were due back soon anyway—” Crap. She’d forgotten she’d told Oz she wouldn’t be gone more than two weeks and she’d been up here—she did a quick mental count—eleven days.

“It’s going to be a while longer, I’m afraid.”

“What?” Ozzie exclaimed.

“Look, I’ve got things I have to stick around up here for.”

“Like watching snow fall?” Ozzie asked sarcastically, clearly not believing her. “That’s not why I called, but how long? Another week? Look, Mimi, I need to be able to count on you because of things like—”

A clattering sound drew her attention. She spun around. Prescott had nearly upended himself down the stairwell. She clamped the cell phone to her chest. “Watch it, you idiot! Do you want to break the other leg?”

She couldn’t leave the two of them alone like this. Her gaze slew to Bill, hunkered down under the red sofa, his eyes alight with a feral gleam as he growled at Joe, who was attempting to get the rag from him. Crap. She returned the cell phone to her ear. “Yeah, Ozzie about that—”

But Ozzie had gone on. “—told her that we run a legitimate business and that you only work out of the office to ensure that every call is properly documented and billed. She doesn’t buy it. So, I was wondering if you could just tell her when you’ll be back and reassure her that Brooke or I are eminently capable of contacting her mother in your place.”

Ozzie was talking about Jess. Mimi stilled. She’d forgotten about Jess, whom she’d also told she was going to be on vacation but not for how long. Jess was expecting her, and her mother, back.

“Okay, Ozzie,” she said. “Give me her number and I’ll call her.”

“Weren’t you listening? I’ve got her on hold. I can transfer her to you right now. I’d really appreciate it. She is a major pain in the ass.”

Jess was, indeed. She was also scared. “Put her on.”

She heard Ozzie’s sigh of relief. “Thanks, Mimi. You’re the best.”

“I know. Bye, Ozzie.”

There was a series of clicks and then Jess’s voice, angry and sarcastic. “What? Speaking to spooks is so exhausting you have to take time off from it?”

“Actually it’s not the spooks who are exhausting.” Mimi let the inference hang a second, then said, “Hi, Jess. How are you doing?”

“Not that great,” Jess bit out. “Neil’s having second thoughts about moving in, and I am sure it’s because of Mother.”

“Your mother’s haunting him?” Mimi asked, unable to keep the skepticism from her voice. “Did he tell you this?”

“No, but what other reason could there be? I mean, he tells me all the time that he couldn’t live without me, so why would he want to? Live without me, that is.”

Warning bells went off in Mimi’s head. With all the neediness going on, someone was going to have to do the giving, and Mimi greatly feared old Neil had decided it would be Jess. Mimi saw a manipulation in the works.

“He says he has a
bad vibe
about moving in. He needs reassurance. So, there you go. It has to be Mom.”

“What does your therapist think?”

“Oh, some bullshit about learning to be independent.”

Mimi looked over her shoulder. Someone had finally gotten the wine-soaked rag from Bill. It hung from the fireplace mantel like a flag of victory, secured by a heavy book. Prescott was tipped halfway over the side of his chair scrubbing at some red drops on the floor. Joe was watching her. She tucked the cell phone under her chin and wandered toward the hallway.

“You think that’s bullshit?” she asked Jess. “I mean, you lived with your mother until she died, right?”

“Did
she
tell you that?” Jess asked, “she” being Jess’s mom. “Well, she forgot about the
entire semester
I spent living in the St. Cloud dorm my sophomore year.”

In the living room Mimi heard Prescott shouting at Bill and then the crash of something heavy, like a book. Bill had gone for bonus points.

“Jess, living by yourself is great.” Really great, she thought, imagining herself on her knees scrubbing up after Bill. “You get to do what you want, when you want it, without having to ask permission or jibe someone else’s schedule with yours. You get to immerse yourself in whatever interests you.”

“Yeah, that’s fine if that’s the sort of person you are and you like that being-alone shit.” Jess bit the words out as if she had trouble saying them, as if she understood how revealing they were and did not want to sound pathetic. “Look.
I
don’t want to be alone. There’s all this…space around me. I just want it filled up.”

“I understand, Jess,” Mimi said. “But maybe you should take your time, fill in those empty places slowly. There’s no hurry.”

“You don’t understand,” Jess snapped back. “You
have
people. I can hear them in the background.”

Mimi almost snorted. She had people? She would love to tell Jess that she didn’t want to
have
people. Oh, sure, she was used to being
around
people; she was around dozens of people every summer she’d spent at Chez Ducky. But then she was more like one of the benevolent spirits that hovered around the living, there but not affecting much, not really necessary. But even if she told Jess this, she wouldn’t believe her. In fact, Mimi wasn’t altogether sure she’d believe herself.

She was definitely having an effect here, she realized, and she was definitely necessary. And…having fun. More than just being content and satisfied, her usual condition, she was actually having a rousing good time torturing Joe (and herself) and messing around with the dogs. Which was only a testament to how flexible she was, she assured herself, not an indication of any late-life change of character.

“Ms. Olson!” Prescott hollered from the living room. “Bill has that soggy towel again and it’s dripping on the rug this time! Can you
please
get it away from him?”

Blondie appeared in the hall and trotted by Mimi. She sat down in front of the door and looked over her shoulder. She wanted to go out. Blondie was the only polite one in the bunch.

“Mimi! Prescott is going to crawl out of his chair if you don’t hurry up,” Joe called.

No doubt about it, there was a lot of needing Mimi going around.

“I don’t want to be alone,” Jess repeated. Her voice had lost all trace of aggression.

“You’re not,” Mimi said. “You have me.”

Jess made an unladylike sound. “Yeah. Right. But I pay you.”

Mimi took a deep breath. What difference did one more person make? It was only for a short while.

“Not anymore, Jess. Let me give you my cell phone number so you can call me direct.”