Wendy Wax - The House on Mermaid Point

At the sound of a boat horn, or possibly the sight of him, the laborers took their plastic glasses and scattered. Madeline watched him warily as he moved toward her, which was just fine with him. At the last moment he checked his stride. Reaching into his pocket he drew out a quarter and placed it on the table in front of her. “I’ll have a lemonade on the rocks,” he said. “I think you better make it a double.” Of all the things he’d begun dreaming of drinking at night, lemonade wasn’t even on the list.

“All right,” she said stiffly. She reached for a cup. “But I think I may owe you an apology to go with that lemonade.”

Damn straight. He liked that she looked him right in the eye. There was no hint of her original stammer. She’d proved herself a hell of a lot feistier than expected last night. Once she apologized, he’d accept and then . . .

“I’m sorry I attacked you the way I did,” she said. “It seems my reaction may have been as out of line as your rudeness.”

May have been? He frowned. “You don’t seem particularly committed to your apology.”

She frowned back, tossing her dark hair back over her shoulder. “Well, I don’t know how large an apology is required for calling you out on your behavior. You were needlessly and hostilely unresponsive, which is downright—”

“Rude. Yes, I think you made that clear last night.” He watched her chin go up; saw a flash of irritation light her eyes. She filled the cup with ice.

“All right, then, how about this,” she said. “I feel . . . pretty badly that I attacked you at your own table.” The tone was grudging. “That was wrong of me.”

He studied her face, saw her generous lips pressed tight, her large brown eyes slightly frosty. “So you wouldn’t be apologizing if you’d attacked me on neutral ground? Say, at Bud N’ Mary’s? Or over at the Green Turtle Inn?”

He had the distinct impression she was about to roll her eyes at him and only just managed to stop herself.

His anger had begun to seep out of him, but he wasn’t quite ready to let her off the hook. “I think you can do better than that.”

One eyebrow went up and she tilted her head to consider him more closely.

“All right, how about: I feel horrible that I drove you out of your own home.” She poured lemonade over the ice.

“And?”

“You want more?” she asked.

“Oh, yeah.”

She blinked as she handed him his drink, which meant he might have gone a little overboard on the innuendo. He was intrigued by her directness. She wasn’t a woman who would say one thing and mean another.

She took a sip of her own drink then licked her upper lip, but missed the lemonade mustache just above it. “And . . . I was a little worried that I irritated you so much that something might happen to you while you were out fishing today.”

Her concern pricked a hole in the last of his anger. He downed the lemonade she’d served him in one long gulp. “Fortunately, I know the flats around here like the back of my hand.” Even as he brushed aside her concern he was surprisingly touched. People had wanted things from him for a large part of his life, but he couldn’t remember the last time someone had worried about him. Without asking she poured him another glass and seemed to relax when he drank that one down, too. He felt like Wally or the Beaver coming home to milk and cookies after school, something that had never actually happened in his own untelevised childhood.

“I know our being here is an intrusion,” she said now. “And even though I may have gone about defending Avery and Deirdre a little too . . .”

“. . . aggressively?”

His tone had turned teasing. Hers had turned sincere. “The bottom line is they’re really talented. And I know we’ll all do everything we can to make this renovation worth the inconvenience.”

He caught himself wondering just how far she might go to make the inconvenience worth his while, but her clear brown eyes telegraphed not even an ounce of guile and even less sexual innuendo.

“What makes you do things like this?” he asked, suddenly curious. “Coming out here with lemonade and iced tea for everyone?”

She shrugged. “It’s so hot out and everyone is working so hard. I’m used to taking care of my family. I guess I just like to take care of people in general.”

Taking care of people. Now there was a concept. He’d never successfully taken care of anyone he cared about. And no one had ever really taken care of him; not in the way that someone like Madeline Singer probably meant.

She reached up to free her hair from the lopsided ponytail, and he caught himself noticing the rise of her breasts beneath the filthy T-shirt.

“Thanks for the lemonade,” he said as she began to pack up the cooler. “And for the apology.”

“I owed you one.” She picked up the cooler; they moved toward the pool. She stopped and looked him right in the eye. “And I think now that you’ve given us the go-ahead you owe us your cooperation.”

She didn’t wait for him to agree or disagree but headed down the path toward the houseboat, her dark hair swinging across her shoulders.

Will peeled off his T-shirt and dove cleanly into the pool. As he broke into a slow crawl, he found himself wondering what a woman like Madeline Singer might be like in bed.

By the end of the workday on Friday, every muscle in Maddie’s body had been put to the test. A lot of them hadn’t passed. Stripping the bathroom wallpapers had required more brute strength than finesse, and Maddie’s shoulders and biceps ached. Pulling on her bathing suit was a painful experience and she was far too tired to lift her arms again to pull on something over it. The only thing on her mind was making it to the Jacuzzi, where she desperately hoped the warm jets of water would soothe her abused body. After that she intended to submerge herself in the swimming pool for however long it took to feel human again.

She limped along the path behind Avery and Nicole, with Kyra and Dustin behind her. Deirdre brought up the rear. They straggled in a slow-moving line like wounded soldiers returning from war, their glazed eyes fixed on the person in front of them. Even Deirdre, whose role was typically more advisory than hands-on, had pitched in, helping them to haul refuse out to the Dumpster, arranging the more valuable discards under a tarp.

Kyra took Dustin into the swimming pool while Maddie, Nicole, Avery, and Deirdre climbed into the Jacuzzi with whimpers of relief. There they arranged themselves in front of jets, tilted their heads back, and closed their eyes, completely ignoring Troy and Anthony, who had followed their straggling, pathetic progress and were now circling the Jacuzzi.

“Oh, God.” Avery groaned. “Even my lips hurt.”

“I told you not to pry that tack loose with your teeth.” Deirdre’s chiding carried no heat. “And I wish you wouldn’t go up on the roof anymore. I thought I was going to have a heart attack when I saw you strolling around up there.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. It’s part of the job,” Avery said. “And I’m too grateful that we don’t have to replace the whole thing to care how many times I had to go up there.”

“I need a drink,” Nicole murmured. “This place could really use a pool bar. With waiters.”

“You know we can’t drink down here.” Maddie was so tired that opening her eyes seemed a major accomplishment.

“Doesn’t matter.” Nicole spoke slowly, as if forming each word required effort. “I don’t think I have the strength to get a glass to my mouth anyway. And my hands are so numb I’m not sure I could even hold a glass.”

“Too bad it can’t be dispensed intravenously.” Avery yawned.

There was laughter. But they did it quietly and with as little movement as possible.

Kyra and Dustin left the pool to sit on the edge of the Jacuzzi on either side of Maddie. Their feet dangled in the water. Troy and Anthony moved in for a close-up when Dustin slung a chubby arm around Maddie’s shoulder. “Geema hug.” He looped his other arm around her neck and squeezed mightily. Maddie breathed in the combination of little boy mixed with sunshine. The heady scent began to revive her.

“I can’t believe season one of Do Over starts airing next week.” Avery’s head remained tilted back, but her eyes had opened.

“I know.” Maddie gave Dustin’s thigh a gentle squeeze. “I get butterflies in my stomach just thinking about it.” A successful first season would give them something to build on and a continued income, small though it was.

“I haven’t been near a television since we got here,” Deirdre said. “I certainly hope the network has been promoting it.”

“I hope they didn’t make us look too bad.” Nicole aimed the comment at Kyra, who had been in on the final editing. Kyra looked at Troy. Troy stared back.

“It could have been worse,” Kyra said. These were virtually the same words she’d used when the topic had been raised at Christmas.

There was a brief silence as each of them thought about the upcoming day of reckoning. Maddie wanted to believe Do Over would be a hit, the solution to their monetary problems. But if season one didn’t pull a big enough audience, even William Hightower’s name might not be enough to save them.

“Do you think Will would be okay with us watching on his flat-screen?” Avery asked.

“I’m not sure,” Maddie said truthfully. She was still replaying the apology he’d directed her through. He’d seemed so hostile and then so . . . not. “I’m not at all clear on how much cooperation we can expect from him.”

“Well, I’m not sure I want to see myself in high-def on a screen that big,” Nicole said.