angel she’d created in her child’s head and heart. Alice had been the sort of woman who had to have a man in her life or she’d felt worthless. She’d been needy and naive and eternally optimistic. Maddie had never been needy, nor could she recall a time when she’d been naive or overly optimistic about anything. Not even as a child. Discovering that she had absolutely nothing in common with the woman who’d given her birth, nothing that tied her to her mother, left her empty inside.
Early in life, Maddie had developed a hard shell around her soul. Her tough exterior had always been an asset while doing her job, but she didn’t feel so tough today. She felt raw and vulnerable. Vulnerable to what, she didn’t know, but she hated the feeling. It would be so much easier if she tossed the diaries and wrote about a psychopath by the name of Roddy Durban. She’d been writing about the nasty little bastard who’d killed more than twenty-three prostitutes right before she’d found the diaries. Writing about Roddy would be a hell of a lot easier than writing about her mother, but the night that Maddie had taken the diaries home and read them, she knew there was no turning back. Her career, while not always carefully calculated, had not been random. She was a true crime writer for a reason, and as she’d pored over her mother’s overly feminine handwriting, she knew the time had come to sit down and write about the crime that had left her mother dead.
She turned off the water with her foot and reached for the body scrub on the side of the tub. She squirted the thick sugar scrub into her palm and the scent of chocolate cake filled her nose. With it came the unbidden memory of standing on a chair next to her mother and stirring chocolate pudding on the stove. She didn’t know how old she’d been or where they’d lived. The memory was as tangible as a wisp of smoke, but it managed to deliver a punch to the lonely place next to her heart.
Bubbles clung to her breasts as she sat up and lifted her feet over the side of the tub. Obviously, she’d failed to find the calm and comfort she usually found in her bath, and she quickly exfoliated her arms and legs. When she was through, she got out of the tub and dried off, then she rubbed chocolate-scented lotion into her skin.
She tossed her clothes in the hamper and walked into her bedroom. Her three closest friends lived in Boise, and she missed meeting them for lunch or dinner or impromptu bitch sessions. Her friends Lucy, Clare, and Adele were the closest thing she had to a family, and the only people to whom she would consider giving a kidney or loaning money. She was fairly certain they would return the favor.
Last year when her friend Clare had discovered her fiancй with another man, the other three friends had rushed to her house to talk her off the ledge. Out of the four women, Clare was the most kindhearted and easily hurt. She was also a romance writer who’d always believed in true love. For a time after her fiancй’s betrayal, she’d lost her faith in the happy-ever-after until a reporter by the name of Sebastian Vaughan came into her life and restored her faith. He was her very own romance hero, and the two were getting married in September. Maddie had to drive to Boise in a few days to be fitted for her bridesmaid dress.
Once again she was allowing one of her friends to deck her out in a ridiculous dress and make her stand up at the front of a church. The year before she’d been a bridesmaid at Lucy’s wedding. Lucy was a mystery writer and had met her husband Quinn when he’d mistaken her for a serial killer. Long story short, he hadn’t let a little thing like homicide stand in the way of his pursuit of Lucy.
Out of the four friends, that left herself and Adele still single. Maddie pulled on a pair of black cotton panties and tossed the towel on the bed. Adele wrote fantasy novels for a living, and although she had her own man troubles, Maddie figured it was a lot more likely that Adele would marry before she would herself.
Maddie fit the large cups of her bra over her breasts and fastened it in back. In fact, she just didn’t see herself getting married. She wanted a kid about as much as she wanted a cat. The only time a man came in handy was when she needed someone to do some heavy lifting or when she desired a warm naked body next to hers. But she owned a sturdy hand truck and big Carlos, and when she had need of heavy lifting or sexual release she reached for one of them. Admittedly, neither was as good as the real thing, but the hand truck went back in the garage when she was through, and big Carlos got shoved back into her bedside table. Both of them stayed put and didn’t give her crap, play games with her heart, or cheat on her. Pretty much a win-win.
She stepped into a pair of jeans and then shoved her arms through the sleeves of her most comfortable hooded sweatshirt. She just didn’t have the same burning desires, or instincts, or clocks that drove other women into matrimony and childbirth. Which wasn’t to say that she didn’t get lonely sometimes. She absolutely did.
Shoving her feet into a pair of flip-flops, she moved from the bedroom, though the living room, to the kitchen. The noise from the neighbors’ party grew louder and she reached into the refrigerator. Voices floated in through her open windows as she pulled out a bottle of carb-reduced merlot.
She was alone and lonely and apparently feeling quite sorry for herself too. Which really wasn’t like her. She never felt sorry for herself. There were too many people in the world with real problems.
The shrill screech of at least a half dozen Piccolo Petes sliced through the air, and Maddie almost dropped the corkscrew. “Damn it,” she cursed and placed her free hand over her heart. Beyond the French doors leading out to her deck, she could see the pale shadows of dusk and the darkening surface of the usually emerald-green lake. She poured red wine into a glass and carried it outside to the deck and set it on the railing. A dozen or so people stood on the neighbors’ deck and the beach below. Along the water’s edge three mortar tubes stuck out of the sand and pointed toward the sky. Several children held sparklers while men supervised, lit more Piccolo Petes and something that flashed like little strobe lights. Smoke from bombs of every color clouded the beach, and the children ran through the paisley haze like genies from a bottle.
Against the smoke and chaos, Mick Hennessy stood in profile with a punk between his teeth like a long thin cigarette. She recognized his wide shoulders and black hair and the boy who stood gazing up at him. He handed his nephew a lit sparkler and Travis spun on one foot and waved it about. Mick took the punk from between his teeth, said something, and Travis immediately stopped and held the firework in front of him like a statue.
Maddie took a sip of her wine. Yesterday, seeing him at the hardware store had been a real shock. She’d been so intent on her box of poison that she hadn’t noticed him until he’d stood right next to her. Looking up into those blue eyes so close and so much like his father’s had forced a stunned “Christ almighty” out of her.
She lowered the glass and set it on the railing as she watched Mick with his nephew. She really didn’t know what to think about him. Not that she knew enough to form an opinion or that it even mattered. The book she planned to write had nothing to do with him and everything to do with the love triangle between Loch, Rose, and Alice. Like Maddie, Mick had been just another innocent victim.
Louie Allegrezza and two other men knelt close to the water and stuck bottle rockets into several soda bottles. They lit one fuse right after the other, and Maddie watched the rockets fly up high over the water and explode with soft pop-pop-pops.
“Be careful with those around the kids,” Lisa called down to her husband.
“These never hurt anyone,” he called back as he once again loaded up the bottles. Four of the rockets flew straight up, while the fifth flew straight at Maddie. She hit the deck as it whizzed past her head.
“Shit!”
The rocket landed behind her and exploded. With her heart pounding in her ears, she straightened to peer over the railing.
“Sorry about that,” Louie called out.
Through the light wash of gray night, Mick Hennessy looked up and stared at her for several seconds. His dark brows lifted as if surprised to see her. Then he rocked back on his heels and laughed like the whole thing was horribly funny. The dimples denting his cheeks and the amusement in his shining blue eyes gave the illusion that he was as trustworthy and harmless as a Boy Scout. But harmless Boy Scouts wore their beige shirts buttoned and tucked into their pants. A Boy Scout didn’t leave his shirt hanging open, showing off washboard abs and a lickable happy trail running down his sternum, circling his navel, and disappearing behind the waistband of his Levi’s. Not that she was in any danger of licking any part of him. But just because he was who he was and she was who she was didn’t mean she was blind.
“Louie, warn us before you set those things off,” Lisa said above the noise.
