When Lightning Strikes Twice (8 page)

Tim, on the other hand, that hardworking, super-achieving star of St. Philomena’s, graduated first in his class and then headed to the Naval Academy, where he
finished at the top of his class. Right after graduation, Tim married Lisa, a bright pretty naval cadet, who completed her service requirements and was now a full-time mom to their two small children.

Wade kept in contact with Tim, remaining friends over the years despite their disparate lifestyles. Tim was currently stationed at the U.S. Naval Submarine Base in New London, Connecticut, and Wade had visited him there. Naturally, Tim was a superlative officer, husband, and father.

Not wanting to lose touch with the Sheely family, Wade’s friendship had gradually encompassed the other Sheely siblings, especially Dana. As adults, their personalities just clicked; for the past two years they’d been particularly good pals. There were times when Wade considered Dana more fun to be with than Tim ever had been, although he felt guilty for thinking that.

Now, sitting here in Riggin’s, watching a dull Astros vs. Expos game, and reminiscing, Wade found himself longing for his old friend. Fun and laughs aside, he knew he could trust Tim completely. He slid another glance across the table. Until tonight, he probably would’ve said the same about Dana Sheely. But now, it seemed, her first priority was Quinton Cormack.

He tried to stem the spark of anger from flaring into full blaze. He should be cool, he shouldn’t let it bother him. There was business and there was friendship, and it was ill-advised to confuse them, Wade reminded himself.
She
obviously had no difficulty keeping the two areas separate.

“How much longer are you going to sit there and sulk, Saxon?” Dana’s voice shattered his frowning reverie. “Because it’s getting boring, and if you’re going to keep it up, I’m going home.”

“I’m not sulking. And I’m sorry if you’re bored, Sheely.” Wade rallied with an evil grin. “It must be tough for you to hang out with ordinary mortals when you’re accustomed to the sparkling wit and lively conversation provided by your actuary boyfriend Rich Vicker.” Earnest, ever-serious Rich Vicker served as an endless source of
entertainment to Wade. Making jokes about the guy was a surefire way to cheer himself up.

As Dana well knew. “Don’t drag Rich into this,” she issued a halfhearted warning.

“The thrills must be never-ending when he spouts those mortality table statistics.” Wade was just getting started. “I bet the sound of his voice droning those numbers can inspire you to orgiastic heights, huh, Sheely?”

“Rich is very nice, very polite, and it’s unkind of you to make fun of him,” chided Dana. “After all, Saxon Associates uses him as an expert witness in cases, too.”

“How long have you been dating Vicker, Sheely? A decade—or does it only seem that long? How do you stand it? I can barely make it through lunch with the guy without practically falling into a coma. And speaking of comas, have you been to bed with him yet?”

“As if I’d tell you!” Dana’s cheeks flushed a soft pink. She hadn’t come close to going to bed with Rich Vicker in the six months they’d been dating. Actually, it was only when Wade teased her about it that she gave sex with Rich any thought at all. Which probably meant something but she didn’t care to ponder what.

She felt her lips curve into a smile. Wade’s teasing was annoying but being one of ten kids, she knew how to take it and how to dish it out. And anything was better than his bout of sullen pouting.

“Who’s your latest flame, Saxon? It’s been—what?—two weeks since you dumped the debutante in Haddonfield, along with the mall chick from Deptford. You must have a new target in your sites.”

“She’s a
former
debutante, and it’s been over three months since Olivia and I
mutually
decided to end our relationship, Sheely. Oh, and Carolyn manages a Limited Express at the Deptford mall and hardly qualifies as mall chick. We also had a mutual parting of the ways about the same time Olivia and I split.”

“Mutual? That’s not what I heard, Saxon. Word has it
that both Olivia and Carolyn were ready to pick out china patterns and you tucked tail and ran.”

“Can you blame me, Sheely? Think about it—china patterns! Does it get any worse than that?”

“Lots worse. There’s not only china patterns, there are flatware and sheets and kitchen equipment. And then you have to register your choices in stores and look pleased when well-meaning friends give you that stuff as wedding gifts.”

“God!” Wade shuddered. “Stop terrorizing me, Sheely.”

“You’ll be twenty-nine on Christmas Day, Saxon. Coming smack up against the big three-oh, just the age for a premature midlife crisis.” Dana gave him a sweetly nasty smile. “My mom already sees it coming. She predicts it won’t be long before you decide to take that long walk down the aisle with Miss Right. Just the other day Mom was saying how ‘Wade would love to have a family of his own, like ours.’ ”

“I love your mother dearly, Sheely, but she’s slightly off her rocker. Having ten kids will do that to you, I guess. Or maybe that’s how you end up with ten kids in the first place. No offense,” he added hastily.

“None taken. I certainly don’t intend to have ten kids, neither do my sisters and brothers. And I happen to disagree with Mom on the possibility of you settling down soon. I don’t see it happening till deep into the next millennium.”

“You know me so well.”

“Well enough to know that, for you, three months between women is virtually unheard of. What gives, Saxon?”

“I don’t know.” He shrugged and stared moodily into his empty mug. “Lately, I just haven’t felt like putting a lot of effort into dating.”

“Since when have you put
any
effort into dating? Your idea of a big night is renting a video and doing it on the couch. If she’s really special, you might throw in a pizza first.”

Wade gaped at her, dumbfounded.

“No, I haven’t been interviewing your dates, Saxon. Tim told me,” she confessed gleefully. “He knows you best of all, and I pumped him for information the last time he was home for a visit. It’s payback time for your relentless Rich Vicker remarks, Sax.”

“Tim knew me when,” Wade retorted. “He doesn’t have a clue as to how I conduct my affairs as an adult.”

“You’re trying to claim that you’ve become suave?” Dana laughed at the notion. “When was the last time you took a date to the theater or to the symphony in Philadelphia, Saxon? For that matter, when was the last time you took a date to a restaurant that requires a tie? Or even to a first-run movie?”

“If a chick wants to do that stuff, she shouldn’t be dating me,” Wade growled.

“Hmm, maybe your breakups with the post-deb and non-mall chick really
were
mutual. The futility of owning china must’ve finally dawned on them as they ate pizza on a paper plate, one from your warehouse package of five hundred.”

“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” Wade stared at her laughing face, her sparkling blue eyes. All the Sheelys had blue eyes, but hers were bigger and a deeper shade of blue than the rest. Truly striking eyes. “Portraying me as a cheap, sex-crazed Neanderthal?”

“Don’t worry, I won’t tell. Your next main squeeze can find out for herself. So who is she?”

“I have a date night tomorrow with Jennifer Payne,” Wade admitted reluctantly. “She’s—”

“I know who she is. Wow, Saxon! You’re not only pushing thirty, you’ve started to rob the cradle. How stereotypical, how pathetic!”

“I’m not thirty and Jennifer Payne is not a kid. She—”

“Is only twenty-one years old, Saxon. She was in my sister Sarah’s high-school class at St. Philomena’s. She also happened to be my brother Shawn’s date for his Senior Prom. We have the pictures in the family album if you’d care to check out her fifteen-year-old self.”

“No thanks. But I am curious to know if Shawn got lucky and scored on prom night.” Wade’s leer was comically salacious.

“Nobody at St. Philomena’s ever got lucky and scored, not during high school,” Dana said flatly. “We were all too repressed.”

“You’re wrong there, Sheely. Tim and that girl he dated—what was her name, Bernadette something?—scored every weekend. Several times a night.”

“Tim?” Dana nearly fell out of her chair. “My brother Tim? And—And Bernadette Colvin? You’re kidding, of course.” Her incredulity slowly began to fade. “It’s just another one of your dumb jokes. Tim would’ve never—”

“I’m telling you, Tim did. As often as he could. We were best friends, remember? We used to go to the drugstore at the mall to buy condoms together. Tim kept his supply at my house, for obvious reasons.”

Dana’s jaw dropped again. “I—I just can’t believe it.” She looked shell-shocked.

“What’s the big deal, Sheely?” Wade was exasperated. “Girls were throwing themselves at Tim all through high school, and he was a normal guy with the regular amount of hormones. Did you actually think Tim was a virgin when he and Lisa got married? Did you want him to be? C’mon, the guy’s in the navy!”

“Do Mary Jo and Tricia know about this?” Stunned, Dana named the two sisters closest in age to her and Tim. Mary Jo was twenty-seven, Tricia, twenty-five, with Dana sandwiched between them.

“How should I know? Probably not, since you didn’t. Tim isn’t the sort of guy to regale his sisters with—uh—intimate details. Now will you stop looking at me that way, like a six-year-old who’s just been told that the Easter Bunny doesn’t exist.”

Dana felt that way. “What about his marriage to Lisa? The two of them seem so perfect together, so happy. Is it just a facade? Is he—Does he—”

“Tim and Lisa are very happy together,” Wade cut in
impatiently. “Why wouldn’t they be? His earlier relationships with other women have made him even more appreciative of what they have together, Tim told me that himself. Jeez, Dana, don’t tell me you think that a marriage is doomed unless the couple are both virgins on their wedding day!”

“I don’t think that.” She pushed back her chair and stood up, her thoughts hopelessly jumbled.

He’d called her “Dana,” which he only used in front of her parents when he was in full Eddie Haskell mode. He thought she was hopelessly naive, a silly prude. Which, of course, she’d just proven herself to be. She’d given away more than that too, though he hadn’t figured it out yet.

Her face flamed. She didn’t want to be around him when he did. “I don’t want any more beer. I’m going home.”

Dana grabbed her purse and suit jacket and stalked out, leaving him to pay the check. She squinted against the bright sunlight, an almost-blinding contrast to Riggin’s dim interior. And then she remembered that she didn’t have her car. Wade had driven her here.

Abruptly, she turned around and marched back inside to the pay phone in the small vestibule. She was dialing Mary Jo’s number when Wade came to stand beside her.

The answering machine picked up. “Hi,” Mary Jo’s voice chirped on the tape. “You have reached Mary Jo and Steve. Well, almost. We aren’t here but please leave your name and number and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can.”

Dana hung up without leaving a message for her sister and brother-in-law.

“Guess they’re not home from work yet,” Wade observed. He lounged against the wall as she dialed Tricia’s number. And listened to the voice on the answering machine announce that neither Tricia nor her three roommates were there.

“Going to try Shawn next? Good luck. He’s impossible to get ahold of.”

“I’m willing to try,” Dana replied coolly. Shawn lived
at the Sheely home, as did she, but when she dialed, the number was busy. Of course. It was perpetually busy. The Sheelys had been one of the first familes in Lakeview to install Call Waiting. Which didn’t seem to be working.

Dana frowned at the receiver.

“Emily ignoring those persistent little clicks?” Wade asked. “She always does.”

“I’m going to ask Mom to have another talk with Emily.” Dana was disgusted. Fourteen-year-old Emily was the youngest and most talkative Sheely, and she actively resisted any technological attempts to interrupt her lengthy telephone conversations.

“Why don’t I drive you home?” Wade suggested. “Unless you want to continue this exercise in futility? Because if you’re dialing in birth order, Sarah is next on the list and we already know she’s somewhere along the Jersey shore with Matt. Do you think they took Cormack’s car or did they hand it over to Rachel, along with the baby?”

“There are times when I dislike you intensely, Saxon,” Dana gritted through her teeth.

“I know. And this is one of them.” He hooked his hand around the nape of her neck. “I’m sorry I shattered your illusions about your big brother. Let me make it up to you by driving you home.”

She really had no other choice. Dana allowed him to steer her out of the bar to his car, trying to ignore the feel of his long, lean fingers on her neck. But heat crept along her nerve endings, sending a tiny shudder of awareness through her. Which she abruptly and firmly squelched.

After all, Wade touched her often, placing his hand on her shoulder or the small of her back to guide her in and out of places, reaching over to tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear, laying the tips of his fingers on her forearm when he wanted to stress a particular point.

She was used to casual affection, Dana reminded herself. The Sheelys were one of those families who kissed hello and good-bye, who thought nothing of draping a loose arm around one another or linking hands or sitting close together
on the always-crowded sofa to watch TV. No doubt Wade had picked up his habit of easy, informal touching from time spent with the Sheelys because the Saxons were not demonstrative.

Dana and Wade reached his car, and he glided his hand along the length of her back as he opened the door for her. Despite his cavalier attitude toward his dates, he had gentlemanly manners when he chose to exercise them.

Wade’s dark green Mercedes—a special order from the Pedersen Car Shoppe—rolled smoothly out of the parking lot. Dana perused his collection of compact discs before selecting one that she had insisted he buy. Wade complained that the group was hopelessly commercial and derivative and didn’t jibe with his sophisticated musical tastes; she knew he’d enjoyed the band’s concert at the Spectrum when she had dragged him there last summer. Not that he would ever admit it.