Spooning Daisy (28 page)

To the sounds of tormented howls and snapping branches, Daisy scrambled to her feet and fled the woods, faltering when she heard the anguished call of her name.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

“Y
es, ma’am.” Ferris Fitzsimonds nodded into the phone, his eyes on Daisy.

A living, breathing contradiction, Daisy gently tended to Max while her brow knotted irritably and her lips pinched angrily and her eyes burned with malice. Taking a moment, she finagled a twig from her curls, and with a roll of her green eyes, tossed it on the coffee table.

Max did his part, being as surly as an old mule. The few times he had tried to fend for himself, Daisy had barked at him to lie back down on the couch. After he’d knocked his good shin on the coffee table in blind stubbornness, he’d grudgingly done as he was told. But it didn’t stop him from complaining. Loudly and repeatedly. He moaned from the burning in his eyes, groaned at the ice pack on his throbbing knee, and swore at the cold, wet compress flooding his eyes and pillow.

Napoleon made the situation worse with his incessant squawks. “Tina is hot!”

“Can’t you get that bird to be quiet?” Fitz asked, his palm over the mouthpiece.

“A parrot fricassee would probably do the trick,” Daisy shot back.

“That’s not funny,” Max snapped, blindly addressing Daisy.

“Lie back down. I was only kidding.”

“See how you like it when I kid about turtle soup.”

Daisy puffed up. “Elizabeth is not annoying. Your
bird
is.”

“That’s because Elizabeth has no personality. She doesn’t do anything.”

“She does plenty . . .”

Fitz shook his head and moved away from the chaos. “I un’er-stand,” he assured the medic issuing instructions from her home in Seldovia. She was the closest thing to a doctor the coastal villages had; the nearest doctor was across Kachemak Bay in Homer—an hour by boat or fifteen minutes by plane. But the cayenne pepper wasn’t fatal and its blinding effects would be short-lived. Unless he had an allergic reaction, Max would be fine.

“Twenty-four hours. Yes, ma’am,” Fitz repeated into the phone. “Cold compress, no rubbing, and flush the eyes.” Fitz thanked the medic and hung up the phone. He looked at the squabbling pair, took a breath, and waded in.

“The doc said you’ve got to just wait until the effects wear off, which should be in a few hours, but you can’t be doing anything like flying for twenty-four hours—”

“Twenty-four hours!” Max cast off the wet towel and leaned forward. The ice pack slid off his knee and crunched onto the carpet.

Daisy winced at his swollen eyelids and painful squint. But she would not, under any circumstances—no way, no how—feel guilty about a situation Max created himself. “You’re not helping yourself by getting upset.” She reached for the ice pack.

Max squinted in her direction, his jaw granite. “Under the circumstances, I don’t think you’re entitled to an opinion. You’ve been itching to use that pepper spray from our first date!”

Daisy remembered their banter about serial killers and pepper spray and recoiled at Max’s accusation. “Yeah, that’s what happened.” She lobbed the ice pack into his abs, causing a flinch and a curse. “This was my grand plan.” Then she rose from the overstuffed chair she had earlier wrestled toward the couch. “You wouldn’t be in this mess if you hadn’t been trying to scare me. So you can stew in your own rotten juices for all I care!”

Having the last word, she was jerking open the front door before Fitz could stop her. “You can’t leave,” he said in a low voice; he glanced at Max battling an uncooperative ice pack that kept sliding off his knee.

“Watch me,” Daisy said, ignoring the smell of liquor on the young pilot’s breath.

Fitz stepped outside into the cobalt haze with Daisy and softly pulled the front door to. Lights on either side of the door frosted the night with silver. “Someone has to take care of Max, and since we can’t find Rita . . .”

Rita was probably on a date, Daisy figured, but that didn’t mean
she
was backup. “
You
take care of Max since you’re so concerned.”

“Guys can’t take care of guys. Not like this.”

“Oh, please.”

But Fitz didn’t budge from that conviction.

“Max will be just fine without anyone hovering over him,” she insisted.

“But what if he isn’t? And under the circumstances . . .”

“This is not my fault!”

“Look, if I knew someone else to call, I would. But I just landed here. Do you know anyone else?”

She sighed. “We could both stay.”

Fitz hesitated, then, without enthusiasm, said, “Okay.”

“Never mind.” She made an exaggerated sweep for the door. None of this was Fitz’s fault. Why should he have a miserable night?

“You’re a good person, Daisy,” Fitz said with a shy but victorious smile.

“Yeah, yeah.” She waved him off. “Get some sleep. I’ll take care of Attila.”

Fitz wasted no time in making his escape. “Watch for Yogi,” she called after him, although she wasn’t completely convinced such a bear existed. A backhanded wave and soon Fitz had blended into the heathered dusk. Mentally shoring herself up, Daisy stepped back into the house.

“Fitz?”

“Unfortunately not.” Latching the door behind her, she dragged herself toward her patient. Max peeked out from under the compress.

“Will you keep that towel over your eyes?
Pleeeease?
”

“I thought you left.”

“Someone has to stay with you.”

“I don’t see why—”

“Exactly. You don’t
see
.”

“Thanks to you.”

“You ought to be damn thankful you didn’t get shot!”

Lifting the towel from his eyes, Max squinted at Daisy. “You . . . have a gun?”

Daisy clicked off the table lamp—wondering why she hadn’t done that sooner—and sank into her voluptuous chair, relieved to be off her feet. The kitchen lights faded into the living room. “Sobering thought, isn’t it?” she said, without actually confirming. “You might think about that before you pull another Ted Bundy.”

In the subdued lighting with his blurred sight, Daisy looked all soft and fuzzy—in sharp contrast to the hard edge of her voice. Then her fear—and what he’d put her through—registered. “
Ted Bundy?
”

“I’m going to duct tape that towel across your eyes.”

“I wasn’t trying to scare you. Not . . . like that.”

It was, Daisy figured, the closest thing to an apology Max could muster. Not that it was good enough—not for what she’d gone through. Not for the terror that had coursed through her veins. Not for the life that had flashed before her eyes. But it was something. And Max was suffering for his sins. Really suffering.

“I think you’ll be more comfortable in bed.”

“I mean it,” he insisted. “I wasn’t thinking. I was just . . .”

“Being a jerk?”

For a moment, Max had the look of a puppy who’d been scolded. Daisy felt like the jerk wielding the newspaper.

Max laid the towel across his eyes as if trying to hide. “So how’d Fitz escape bedpan duty?”

“He’s got this thing about men taking care of men.”

A smile lifted Max’s lips. “Yeah.”

“You too?”

“You don’t know much about men, do you?”

Daisy grunted. “I know plenty; none of it good.”

“You’d be miserable if you didn’t have men to complain about.”

“If that’s the case, then let me be miserable.”

Max rolled his head toward the kitchen. “Where’s Napoleon?”

Daisy looked around, realizing, as had Max, that the parrot hadn’t been heard from recently.

Max started to rise.

She pushed him back. “I’ll find him.” A few steps toward the kitchen and she smiled. Teal tail feathers jutted toward the ceiling; Napoleon was head deep in the cracker jar.

“Take these,” Daisy said, holding two codeine capsules and a glass of orange juice.

With a few groans, Max maneuvered himself to a sitting position against his headboard. Light from the bedside lamp caressed his bare chest. She had convinced Max to go to bed and to take pain-numbing drugs for his knee. Convinced him that a good night’s sleep would be the best thing for him. Convinced him
after
she’d put Napoleon to bed in his cage precisely as Max had dictated, draping a black sheet over the wire to quell his squawks.

“The last time you gave me drugs, you vanished.”

She put the glass in his right hand and the drugs in his left. “You won’t be so lucky this time.”

Max handed back the empty glass. “
Bad
luck, maybe.”

Daisy ignored what might’ve been a compliment. Max was not going to schmooze her, not after everything he’d put her through. “Do you want more ice for your knee?”

“I think it’s sufficiently glacier-ized.”

“Your eyes look better. How do they feel?”

“Not terrible.”

“Then go to sleep.”

“What’re you going to do?”

“Sleep on the sofa.”

“There’s plenty of room here.”

She flicked off the bedside lamp. “Good night, Max.”

“Right. You’ve got that sheet phobia thing.”

She headed for the door and the light beyond. “Holler if you need anything.”

“They were put on clean this morning.”

Daisy turned at the threshold. “Which gave you time for at least one blonde.”

“I thought you were on a ferry back to Seattle!”

“Which makes it all okay.” Daisy pulled the door to—“Sweet dreams, Max”—and latched it.

No longer kept at bay by interior lights, a cobalt glow swarmed the bedroom, entering through the undraped sliding deck doors

Max stretched under the sheets, trying to eke out a little comfort from a body that wasn’t cooperating. Years of hard work and hard play had taken their toll. Physically
and
mentally . . .

Daisy made it impossible for a guy to apologize. Not that he was apologizing for the blonde. Or anything else, for that matter. But if he was inclined . . . well, she made it impossible.

Frustrated—by just about everything, including his ambivalence about Daisy—Max threw off the sheet and slipped his legs over the side of the bed. He labored to stand, hitched up his boxers, then he hopped around the bed toward the glass doors.

Daisy frowned at the thumping coming from the bedroom. Max Kendall was worse than a six-year-old! Daisy marched to his room. She swung open the door, intending to lay down the law, when the empty bed stopped her. Then she caught sight of Max, sitting on his deck in the gleam of the night that wasn’t quite night, his gaze somewhere out beyond the shore.

Don’t go there, don’t go there, don’t go there
, Daisy told herself as she headed there.

“You should be in bed.” She stood in the track of the open slider, not quite in, not quite out.

“Too much going on in my head.”

“You should use your crutches.”

“I
should
do a lot of things.”

“Like going back to bed.” Daisy pushed open the screen and the glass to its full width. “C’mon. I’ll help.”

“Do you ever watch the ocean, Daisy?”

Daisy paused against the jamb, crossed her arms, and listened to the surf. Across the bay, Homer twinkled. A beacon swept the twilight. A breeze brushed past her like a ghost, leaving goose bumps in its wake. Clouds with silver Mylar tops and ominous metal-gray bellies were moving in from the west.

That poor slice of moon doesn’t have a chance
, Daisy thought of the sky’s lone defender.

“Daisy?”

“It’s going to rain,” she answered as her curls fluttered against her cheeks.

“I take that as a
no
.”

“I don’t have the time . . . or the view.”

Max gave her a quarter-turn look, but otherwise ignored what he heard as a complaint about her accommodations.

“There’s something sad about the waves,” she finally said.

“Sad?”

“Never mind.”

“Oh, c’mon. Finish.”

“It’s just . . . well . . . Jason and I used to vacation in Kona. And we always had a room with an ocean view. I would sit on the balcony when the sun was just coming up, sipping my vanilla latte, and I’d watch the waves crash on the shore, over and over, like they were trying to escape, but the ocean just dragged them back in . . .”

“
Trying to escape?
” He looked across his left shoulder at her. “From what? The ocean?”

“Sure. Why not?”

“The waves
are
the ocean. That’s like my hand trying to escape my arm.”

“No, it’s not,” Daisy said. “The ocean isn’t one entity. It’s made up of billions of little entities. And some of those entities want to see what life is like on land.”

Max frowned. “The waves are not trying to escape; they’re reaching.”

“Reaching?”

“Reaching, exploring, checking things out. Seeing what they can find on the beach to claim as their own.”

“Your waves might be reaching.
Mine
are trying to escape.”

Like two interpretations of a Rorschach
, Max thought. “Maybe it was
you
who wanted to escape. From Jason.”

Refusing to go there, Daisy turned the tables. “Who’s Molly-Anne?”

“How do you know about Molly-Anne?”

“Your boat told me.”

He chuckled.

“Men don’t name their boats after just anybody. Who is she?”

“The love of my life.”

Her thoughts screeched to a halt. At his admission? At the idea that Max Kendall could
love
? Or at the unexpected inkling of jealousy she felt? But Max Kendall suddenly seemed, well,
less
Max Kendall.

“So what happened?”

“She died.”

“Died?” It was so unexpected . . .
soooo
unexpected, Daisy hadn’t the wherewithal to come up with a sympathetic response. Or even an unsympathetic response. But it explained a lot, she thought, feeling uncharacteristically ambivalent about further prying. However tough it was to compete with the living—Tina, for example—it was impossible to compete with the dead. Not that she was trying to compete for Max. No way, no sir, no how!