Rachel Gibson - Tangled Up in You

Mick figured it would take the twins less than a year of working for themselves before they filed for bankruptcy. To say the boys weren’t the sharpest knives in the drawer was an understatement.

“There’s good money in flippin’ houses.”

“Uh-huh.” He was going to have to talk to Travis about paying attention to the game.

“As much as fifty grand a month. That’s what Scooter says.”

“Uh-huh.” Geez-us. Now the kid was turned completely around and watching cars drive by in the street.

“Have you talked to that writer yet?”

He probably shouldn’t yell at Travis to watch the game, but he wanted to. “What writer?”

“The one who’s writin’ a book about your parents and that waitress, Alice Jones.”

Maddie tossed her overnight bag on her bed and unzipped it. She had a slight headache, and she wasn’t sure if it was due to her lack of sleep, drinking too much with Adele, or listening to her friend’s stories about her fractured love life.

After she’d had lunch at Cafй Olй, she and Adele had gone back to her house in Boise to catch up. Adele always had really funny stories about her love life—although she sometimes didn’t mean for them to be quite so entertaining—and like a good friend, Maddie had listened and poured the wine. It had been a long time since Maddie had been able to reciprocate with funny and entertaining stories of her own, so mostly she’d just listened and offered occasional advice.

Before leaving Boise, she’d invited Adele to spend the following weekend with her. Adele agreed to come and, knowing her friend, Maddie was sure she’d have several more dating horror stories to share.

Maddie took her dirty clothes from the bag and tossed them into her hamper. It was just after noon and she was starving. She ate a chicken breast and some celery with cream cheese while she checked and answered her e-mails. She checked her answering machine, but there was only one message, and that was from a carpet cleaner. No word from Sheriff Potter.

Later, she planned to find Mick and tell him who she was and why she was in town. It was the right thing to do, and she wanted him to hear it from her first. She figured she could find him at one of his two bars, and she hoped he was working at Mort’s tonight. She really wasn’t looking forward to walking into Hennessy’s, although she would have to at some point. She’d never been inside the bar where her mother had died. To her, Hennessy’s wasn’t just another old crime scene. One she had to visit for her book. She would have to go to note the changes and observe the place. And while she certainly wasn’t afraid, she was apprehensive.

As she rinsed her plate in the sink and put it in the dishwasher, she wondered exactly how angry Mick was likely to get. Until her friends had mentioned it, she hadn’t thought of packing her Taser when she told him. While he seemed perfectly nonviolent, he had shot Hellfire missiles from helicopters. And of course his mother had been a nut job, and while Maddie liked to think she had a special psycho radar, honed after years of meeting with them while they’d been chained to a table, it never hurt to err on the side of caution and a really good pepper spray.

The doorbell rang, and this time she wasn’t surprised to see Mick standing on her porch. Just like last time, he held a business card between two fingers, but there was no mistaking that the card was hers.

He stared at her from behind the blue lenses of his sunglasses, and his lips were set in a flat line. He wasn’t wearing a happy face, but he didn’t look too angry. She probably wouldn’t have to hose him with the pepper spray. Not that she even had it on her.

Maddie lowered her gaze to the card. “Where did you get that?”

“Jewel Finley.”

Crap. She really hadn’t meant for him to find out that way, but she wasn’t surprised. “When?”

“Last night at Travis’s T-ball game.”

“I’m sorry you heard about it like that.” Maddie didn’t invite him inside, but he didn’t wait for an invitation.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked as he brushed past her, six feet two, one hundred and ninety pounds, of determined man. Trying to stop him would have been as futile as trying to stop a tank.

Maddie closed the door and followed. “You didn’t want to know anything about me. Remember?”

“That’s a bunch of bullshit.” Light from outside flowed in through the large windows, over the back of the sofa and coffee table and across the hardwood floor. Mick stopped within the spill of light and took off his sunglasses. Maddie had been wrong about his anger. It burned like blue fire in his eyes. “I didn’t want to know about your old boyfriends, your favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe, or who you sat next to in the second grade.” He held up the card. “This is different, and don’t pretend that it’s not.”

She pushed her hair behind her ears. He had a right to be angry. “That first night at Mort’s, I went there to introduce myself and to tell you who I was and why I was in town. But the bar was busy and it wasn’t a good time. When I saw you at the hardware store and on the Fourth, Travis was with you and I didn’t think it an appropriate time then either.”

“And when I was here alone?” He frowned and stuck his glasses on top of his head.

“I tried to tell you that day.”

“Is that so?” He slid the card in the pocket of his black Mort’s Bar polo shirt. “Before or after you stuck your tongue down my throat?”

Maddie gasped. Yeah, he had a right to be angry, but not to rewrite history. “You kissed me!”

“An appropriate time,” he said as if she hadn’t protested, “might have been before you glued yourself to my chest.”

“Glued? You pulled me in to your chest.” Her gaze narrowed, but she wouldn’t allow herself to get angry. “I told you that you didn’t know me.”

“And instead of you telling me the important shit like you’re in town to write a book about my parents, you thought I would be more interested in knowing that you’re ‘kind of sexually abstinent.’” He rested his weight on one foot and tilted his head to one side as he looked down at her. “You weren’t planing to tell me.”

“Don’t be absurd.” She folded her arms beneath her breasts. “This is a small town and I knew you’d find out.”

“And until I did, were you planning to fuck me for information?”

Don’t get mad, she told herself.

If you get mad, you might get out the Taser. “There are two problems with your theory.” She held up a hand and raised one finger. “That I need you to give me information. I don’t.” She raised a second finger. “And that I was planning to fuck you. I wasn’t.”

He took a step toward her and smiled. Not one of his nice, charming smiles either. “If I’d had more time, you would have been flat on your back.”

“You’re dreaming.”

“And you’re lying. To me and to yourself.”

“I never lie to myself.” She looked into his eyes, not in the least intimidated by his size or anger. “And I never lied to you.”

His gaze narrowed. “You purposely hid the truth, which is the same damn thing.”

“Oh, that’s rich. A morality lesson from you. Tell me, Mick, do all the women you sleep with know about each other?”

“I don’t lie to women.”

“No, you just bring mousetraps thinking that will get you into their pants.”

“That isn’t the reason I brought you the trap.”

“Now who’s lying?” She pointed toward the door. “It’s time for you to leave.”

He didn’t budge. “You can’t do this, Maddie. You can’t write about my family.”

“Yes, I can, and I’m going to.” She didn’t wait for him but walked to the door and opened it.

“Why? I’ve read all about you,” he said as he moved toward her, his boot heels an angry thud across the hardwood. “You write about serial killers. My mother wasn’t a serial killer. She was a housewife who’d had enough of a cheating husband. She flipped out and killed him and herself. There’s no big villain here. No sick bastards like Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer. What happened to my mother and father is hardly the sensational sort of stuff that people want to read about.”

“I think I’m a little more qualified to determine that than you.”

He stopped on the threshold and turned to face her. “My mother was just a sad woman who snapped one night and left her children orphaned, victims of her mental illness.”

“All this talk of you and your family, you seem to forget there was another innocent victim.”

“That little waitress was hardly innocent.”

Actually, she’d been talking about herself. “So you’re like everyone else in this town and think Alice Jones got what she deserved.”

“No one got what they deserved, but she was screwing around with a married man.”

Now. Now she was truly good and angry. “So your mother was perfectly justified in shooting her in the face.”

His head jerked back as if she’d slapped him. Obviously he hadn’t seen the photos or read the report.

“And your father may have been a cheater, but did he deserve to be shot three times and bleed to death on a barroom floor while your mother watched?”

His voice rose for the first time. “You’re full of shit. She wouldn’t have watched my father die.”

If he hadn’t told her she was full of shit, she would have spared him, no matter her own anger. “Her bloody footprints were all over the bar. And she didn’t get up and walk around after she shot herself.”

His mouth clamped shut.

“Alice Jones had a child too. Did she deserve to lose her mother? Did she deserve to be made an orphan?” Maddie placed her hand in the center of his chest and pushed. “So don’t tell me that your mother was just some sad housewife who’d been pushed too far. She had other options. Lots of other options that didn’t involve murder.” He took a step back out onto her porch. “And don’t come here and think you can tell me what to do. I really don’t give a damn if you like it or not. I’m going to write the book.” She tried to shut the door, but his arm shot out and kept it open.