“And because you want me.” He climbed out of the water.
She looked at him out of the corners of her eyes. At his hard chest muscles and the line of wet, dark hair trailing down his abdomen and belly and disappearing beneath the waistband of his swimming trunks. “True.”
“And Lord knows I want you too.” He pulled up the anchor and put it in a side compartment. Then he moved to the captain’s chair and looked over at her while she tied her sarong around her hips.
“What?”
He shook his head and started the motor, a deep throaty churning of the prop. The boat rocked from side to side and Maddie took the companion seat. For several more seconds, Mick gazed at her before he finally looked away and pushed the throttle forward.
Maddie held her hair with one hand as they shot across the lake. Conversation was impossible, but she wouldn’t have known what to say. Mick’s behavior was a little odd. She’d thought she knew how to read most of his expressions. She knew how he looked when he was angry, when he was teasing and charming, and she certainly knew how he looked when he wanted sex. He was oddly quiet, as if he were thinking about something, and didn’t say much until they stood on her deck twenty minutes later.
“If I didn’t have to go to work tonight, I’d stay here and play with you,” he said.
“You can come back later.”
He sat in an Adirondack chair facing her and pulled the sarong from her hips. It fluttered to her feet. “Or you could come over tonight when I get off work.” He placed his hands on the backs of her thighs and brought her between his knees.
“To Mort’s?”
He shook his head and nibbled the side of her leg. “Throw some stuff in a bag and come over to my house. I know you like to fall asleep and have me gone in the morning, but I think we’ve moved beyond pretending this is nothing more than sex. Don’t you?”
Did she? It couldn’t be more. It could never be more. She closed her eyes and ran her fingers through his hair. “Yes.”
He softly bit the outside of her thigh. “I should probably pick you up so you don’t have to drive at night.”
This was bad. Wrong, but it felt so good. So right. “I can drive.”
“I know you can, but I’ll pick you up.”
From somewhere behind Maddie, a little voice asked, “What are you doing?”
Mick lifted his head and froze. “Travis.” He dropped his hands and stood. “Hey, buddy. What’s up?”
“Nothin’. What were you doing?”
Maddie turned to see Mick’s nephew standing on the top stair of the deck.
“I was just helping Maddie with her swimming suit.”
“With your mouth?”
Maddie laughed behind her hand.
“Well, ah…” Mick paused and looked at Maddie. It was the first time she’d ever seen him flustered. “Maddie had a thread,” he continued and pointed vaguely at her thigh, “and I had to bite it off for her.”
“Oh.”
“What are you doing here?” Mick asked.
“Mom dropped me off to play with Pete.”
Mick looked toward the neighbors’ deck. “Is your mother still at the Allegrezzas’?”
Trevor shook his head. “She left.” He looked from his uncle to Maddie. “You got more dead mice?”
“Not today. But I did get a cat and she’ll be old enough in a few months to kill them for me.”
“You have a cat?”
“Yeah. Her name is Snowball. She has different colored eyes and an overbite.”
Mick looked at her. “Seriously.”
“I’ll show you two boys.”
“What’s an overbite?” Travis asked as the three of them moved into the house.
Mick was home half an hour before his sister knocked on the door. She didn’t wait for him to answer.
“Travis told me he saw you kissing Maddie Dupree’s butt,” she said as she walked into the kitchen, where she found Mick fixing a sandwich before work.
He looked up. “Hello, Meg.”
“Is it true?”
“I wasn’t kissing her butt.” He’d been biting her thigh.
“Why were you there? Travis saw your boat at her dock. What is going on between the two of you?”
“I like her.” He sliced the ham sandwich and put it on a paper plate. “It’s not a big deal.”
“She’s writing a book about Mom and Dad.” She grabbed his wrist to get his attention. “She’s going to make us all look bad.”
“She says she’s not interested in making anyone look bad.”
“Bull. She’s digging up dirt to make money off our pain and suffering.”
He looked into his sister’s deep green eyes. “Unlike you, Meg, I don’t dwell on the past.”
“No.” She let go of his wrist. “You just choose to not think about it as if it didn’t happen.”
He picked up half the sandwich and took a bite. “I know what happened, but I don’t live it every day like you do.”
“I don’t live it every day.”
He swallowed and took a drink from a bottle of Sam Adams. “Maybe not every day, but every time I think you’ve finally moved on, something happens and it’s like you’re ten again.” He took another bite. “I’m going to live my life in the present, Meg.”
“You don’t think I want you to live your life? I do. I want you to find someone, you know I do, but not her.”
“You talked to her.” He was getting bored with the conversation. He liked Maddie. He liked everything about her, and he was going to keep seeing her.
“Only because I wanted her to hear that our mother wasn’t a crazy woman.”
He took another drink and set the bottle on the counter. “Mom was crazy.”
“No.” She shook her head and grabbed his shoulder to turn him toward her. “Don’t say that.”
“Why else would she kill two people and then herself? Why else would she leave her two children orphaned?”
“She didn’t mean to.”
“You say that, but if she’d just wanted to scare them, why did she load the .38?”
Meg dropped her hand. “I don’t know.”
