A Mother's Heart (14 page)

No, she could remember, she had to remember. It was about him being impulsive, going with whatever he felt. It was about the shock she remembered so clearly, Grant loving her, Grant adoring her, Grant clearly the one, and then in Marquand Park that day, oops, he’d changed his mind.

And yet…he wasn’t that boy anymore, not entirely. He had committed to a job, a house, and maybe now he was capable of committing to her.

Was that what she wanted? She didn’t know.

“You’re tensing again. What are you thinking about?”

She started to make up something about work, or a plan to clean Clara’s house, and then his voice came back to her.
Cut loose.

“I’m thinking about how much I love having your hands on me again. And I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

His hands stopped. For a count of five. Then he let out his breath as if he’d been holding it. “Why not?”

“Call it instinct.”

“Call it fear. Cut loose, Maggie.” His voice was low and mesmerizing. “Don’t keep denying yourself what you want out of life or you’ll end up not living.”

She closed her eyes, totally disoriented. Was he right? Had she shut herself away in the same carefully controlled ivory tower her parents inhabited?

Help.

When Grant’s hands started again, his touch changed. His pace slowed, his hands explored her back again, but under her top, the contact between his fingers and her skin deliberately sensual.

“I love having my hands on you again, too, Maggie. You have no idea.”

Her body heated to full-blast arousal, like one of those induction stoves that turns red-hot in an instant.

The ring of her phone was torture. Nothing mattered but Grant and this ache for him.

“Want me to answer it?” His hands slid along the edges of her back, nearly brushing the sides of her breasts.

“No.” She turned over and pulled off her top. “Turn it off.”

In two strides he crossed to her phone, then returned to the bed, sat on its edge, splayed his fingers possessively over her rib cage. He started to speak, then stopped.

“What?” His warm gaze nearly undid her.

“Only this.” He leaned down to kiss her; she wrapped her arms around his neck, and in an instant, he was no longer Grant the responsible salary-earning professional. He was her rebel, all muscle and powerful urgency, who unleashed a part of her no other man had ever reached.

“You’ve only gotten more beautiful, Maggie.”

She managed to whisper her thanks, thinking that with Grant she’d always felt beautiful, always felt accepted and cherished, instead of criticized and judged. Until that day at Marquand Park that blew her teenage world apart. She couldn’t let him in far enough that he’d be able to do that to her again. She’d never let anyone in that far since.

Cut loose.
She turned her brain off, turned off the warning signals as she had so many times on so many adventures with this man. His body was intimately familiar even in its more mature and masculine shape and she dove in, to his scent, to the warmth of his skin and to the joy of being so desired by someone who used to know her so well, someone she didn’t need to pretend with.

His hands were large and possessive over her breasts. She didn’t want him to stop touching her ever. Ever. His back and shoulders were strong, muscled, sexual. She stroked down the length, over the firm curve of his buttocks, wanting to feel them working on top of her. She was ravenous for this man, and she proved it with her lips and mouth and tongue until he stopped her, put on a condom and pushed her back against the mattress with his body.

“Is this what you want?” He was holding himself off her, breathing fast, arms solid on either side of her head. “Are you sure?”

She met his dark eyes without hesitation, drew her legs apart, pressed down on his lower back to bring him closer. “I’m sure.”

Then for the first time ever, slowly, reverently, Grant slid inside her, and a wave of emotion built from her center and crashed over her heart.

It was useless to pretend she had any chance of keeping herself safe. She loved him. She’d never stopped loving him. Even after he hurt her, even after he rejected her, even after she let other men into her life and into her body, it was always Grant.

She’d come to Princeton to find herself in the woman who gave her up, and she’d found herself instead in the man who’d done the same.

“H
ELLO
?” Maggie stuck her head into Clara’s front hallway. She’d spent the entire night alternately dozing and making love with Grant, and she was exhausted, exhilarated and a bit sore. He’d dropped her here on his way to work, and she’d discovered Clara’s front door wide open and no sign of her.

Her dog, however, lost no time in claiming sniffing rights.

“Hi, Wobbles.” Even Maggie’s exasperation was good-natured. She felt like a total cliché, starting the evening cranky, repressed and knotted up, and waking after a night of sex humming, stretching and smiling ceaselessly.

Yup. That was her. Cliché come to life.

She’d checked her messages this morning before leaving the hotel—while Grant was showering—and after listening guiltily through several panicked voice mails, miracle of miracles, there came a message from Darla saying they’d come up with a solution and everyone was happy.

Maybe Grant was right. Maybe she could loosen her hold a little, push her coworkers out of the nest. The idea was a little scary, but the fact that she reacted with fear to the idea of freedom only gave more credence to Grant’s theory of her martyrdom.

Cut loose.

“Clara?” She heard banging noises from the living room, and a loud thump.
“Clara?”

“Here, dear!”

Maggie followed her voice and turned the corner. She was so happy today she didn’t even mind that her mother was wearing lime-green overalls with a man’s brown polo shirt. Then the rest of the room registered. “Wow.”

The paint-splotched sheets had been taken off the furniture. The piles of newspaper and books had been cleared away. It even looked as if she’d vacuumed. What’s more, the pieces of furniture turned out to be of good quality in colors that complemented the room and each other.

“This is amazing. It’s gorgeous!”

“Thank you, dear.” Clara ran a dustcloth across a bookcase, looking vulnerable and slightly perplexed. “It’s funny. I didn’t realize until you said…I mean I’d lived here so long, I got used to it.”

“Oh, Clara.” Maggie put a hand to her chest. “I’m so sorry, I never meant to make you feel—”

“No, no. It’s good that you did. I never thought about how the place must look to other people, and how they must judge me. I suppose I seem like a kook.”

“No. No. Not at all.” Her voice came out too high and thin.

Silence. Wobbles sneezed. Clara gave her an oh-come-on look.

“Okay. Um. Maybe a little…eccentric.”

“I’ll take it.” Clara smiled, to Maggie’s intense relief. “It’s good that you came, Maggie. Apparently I needed to be reflected back to myself.”

“Strangely enough, I know exactly what you mean.” She gestured toward the vacuum cleaner. “Can I help?”

“Of course not.” Clara waved her off, bent to pick up a broom that had fallen behind a chair. “You’re a guest, you shouldn’t have to do my cleaning.”

“I’m not a guest, Clara.” Maggie was surprised by a wave of genuine affection. “I’m your daughter.”

Clara blinked. Blinked again. “Well. Yes. So you are. I guess that’s different, isn’t it.”

“A lot different.”

“In that case…” She lifted the broom like a general leading a charge. “To the kitchen.”

For hours they scrubbed and dusted and vacuumed, threw away and organized, recycled and repaired. Kitchen, front hall, bathroom, bedrooms. While they cleaned, they talked. About painting, about sculpture, about the creative process, about life in Princeton, life in Chicago, about food and exercise and being female in the twenty-first century. About love and motherhood and family.

Bit by bit Maggie lost her feeling that they’d come from different planets on different orbits in different galaxies. Under her spacey exterior, Clara was obviously tremendously intelligent. And Maggie shared more world and social views with her than she did with her adoptive parents.

“There.” Clara brushed her hands together and looked around. “It does look nice, doesn’t it?”

Maggie touched her mother’s shoulder. “It looks wonderful.”

“I feel like a new woman in a house this nice. Maybe I’ll even go put on something decent.” She shot Maggie a wry look. “Think that’s a good idea?”

Maggie nodded, tired in body, giddy in spirit. “Go for it.”

Clara reappeared ten minutes later in a long rose-colored sweater that fell to her still-trim hips over a pair
of casual black pants. She looked lovely, elegant, and so normal Maggie almost missed the lime-green overalls. Almost. “You’re beautiful.”

“Nonsense, you’re the beautiful one.”

“I take after you, then.”

Clara’s eyes filled. She clasped Maggie to her impulsively. “Having you here, I feel as if I’m coming back to life.”

Maggie squeezed her back, smelling lavender and vanilla and thinking she’d never inhaled anything so delicious or so dear. “I feel the same way.”

“Grant has something to do with that, I’m guessing.”

“Are you?” Maggie blinked innocently.

Clara laughed in delight. “You belong together, my dear, you’ll see. But now I have a more important question. When was the last time you ate at Hoagie Haven?”

“Oh boy.” Maggie rubbed her stomach eagerly. “Way too long ago.”

“My treat. Let’s go.”

They drove to Hoagie Haven and each ordered a whole sub loaded with cold cuts and soaked in the oil and vinegar dressing that made them so memorable. They took their sandwiches to a bench on Palmer Square and sat in the sunshine, gorging themselves.

“Oh these are so good.” Maggie swallowed a mouthful blissfully, wondering why everything in Princeton—that Clara hadn’t cooked—tasted so much better than at home.

“Sometimes the best food experiences have nothing to do with being gourmet.” Clara took a sip of her Diet Coke. “I’d like to paint you. Would that be okay?”

The question came so suddenly that Maggie needed a few seconds to process her mother’s request and react. When she did, it was with a lump in her throat that thickened her words. “Wow. Clara. I’m touched. Thank you.”

“I wanted Grant to ask you. I was afraid you’d say no, or be annoyed. But I realized that was a stupid thing to be afraid of and that if you said yes, I’d want it to be to my face, not his. So I called him last night on his way to you and told him not to say a word.”

“He didn’t.” She lowered her sub. Hadn’t she and Grant just been talking about not giving in to fear of what might happen? Hadn’t he said she and Clara were more similar than she realized?

“So is that a yes?”

“Absolutely. Yes.”

Her mother beamed, and for a second Maggie saw herself in her mother’s features, which made her beam back.

“Lovely. I’ll have Grant take a picture of you. He’s a very good photographer among all the other things he’s good at.”

Maggie pictured herself on her hands and knees suppressing a scream of ecstasy and had to stuff her sandwich in her mouth to stifle a giggle. Yes, he was good at many, many things. “I’d offer to sculpt you but I’m—”

“Oh, Maggie. I’d love that. Or even better, I’d love one of Wobbles. He won’t last forever, and it would be great to have him around after he’s gone. Thank you.”

Maggie opened her mouth to object. She’d been about to refuse. She wasn’t up to the job. She didn’t have time. Then the thought of the dog’s soulful eyes, his noble muzzle—which she wished he’d keep more to himself—being translated into clay under her hands, and she was suddenly and fiercely crazy to try.
Cut loose.
“It might be a disaster…”

“It couldn’t be. Moms love everything their kids make, didn’t you know that?”

Maggie smiled at the extraordinary woman next to her. “I guess I did.”

“So not to change the subject, and not to pry, but—”

“You’re going to do both.”

“Of course.” Clara pulled a strip of lettuce hanging from her hoagie and popped it into her mouth. “What is happening between you and Grant?”

“Oh. Well.” Maggie felt herself blushing. “Good things I guess. At least for—”

“Wonderful!” The joy in Clara’s voice was a surprise. “I knew he hadn’t gotten you out of his system and you hadn’t gotten him out, either, had you?”

She took a deep breath. “Not by a long shot.”

“Scary?”

“Terrifying.”

“Wonderful?”

“More than I dreamed.”

“You’re in love.”

“I guess I am.” She put the rest of her sandwich back down on its paper, which was threatening to blow off the bench. A surge of emotion made eating impossible. For one thing, being in love made her prone to both giddiness and tears, sometimes within seconds of each other. She’d forgotten. And for another…she couldn’t imagine having this conversation with Jane Chesterton, whom she’d known all her life. Which made her sad.

“Now you need to move back to Princeton.”

“Ha!” She sipped her soda. “Not so fast.”

“I was serious. Why not? Great hoagies, great men, what’s Chicago got?”

Maggie laughed so she wouldn’t have to answer.

“Maybe too soon?”

“Just a little.”

“Think about it. I’d love it. I
know
Grant would love it. And of course Wobbles.”

“Why did you name him Wobbles? Not to change the subject.”

“Of course not.” She winked a knowing eye. “Well, when he was a puppy he was all over the place. Once I’d laid a yardstick between stacks of books and he tried to cross it. Wobbled all over but he never fell.”

Maggie nearly got soda up her nose from laughing. “Weebles wobble but they don’t fall down!”

“That’s it.” Clara finished the last bite of her sandwich and crumpled the paper. “He’s a good dog. I’ll miss him terribly when he passes.”

Maggie’s heart sank. She couldn’t bear to think of her mom—her
mom!
—alone and sad like that. Of course Clara would have Grant next door. Maggie would be the only one alone, and much sooner than the end of Wobbles’s life. “I’m sure you will.”

“Well, life and death, it’s all part of the bargain. Now.” She gave Maggie’s knee a gentle smack. “What would you like to do? Take a walk? Run twenty miles? Sightsee? Shop?”

Maggie put her arm around her mother. “How about we just go home and talk?”