A Soft Place to Fall (26 page)

Maybe having a postage-stamp sized kitchen
wasn't such a bad thing after all. She leaned over and pressed a
kiss to his shoulder. "Liar," she said.

He took the carton of eggs from her and
placed them on the counter. "Come here," he said then gathered her
into his arms.

"This is a kitchen," she said, as she wrapped
her arms around his neck. "We don't do things like this in the
kitchen."

"Why not?"

She thought for a second. "Tradition?"

"Turkey for Thanksgiving is a tradition."

"You really shouldn't make me laugh when
you're trying to be romantic."

He loved her laugh. He loved everything about
her. "You laughed before," he said. "A lesser man might've
worried."

"I'm happy," she said, knowing he couldn't
understand – not yet – all that those words meant to her. "You make
me happy."

They stood there for a long time, bodies
pressed together, and maybe they would have stayed like that until
dawn if George and Gracie hadn't chosen that moment to tear through
the kitchen like the hounds of hell were after them then skid to a
stop in the door.

"They're not too crazy about me," Sam said,
eyeing them over the top of Annie's head.

"You're new," she said. "They'll get used to
you."

"How about you? Think you'll get used to
me?"

"No," she said, raining kisses along his
throat and jaw. "I hope I never get used to you."

Sam was no stranger to the kitchen. It didn't
take Annie more than a few seconds to see that he knew his way
around colanders and chopping blocks.

"You're awfully good at this," she said as he
buttered the English muffins and slathered on the blueberry jam.
"Did you ever work as a short order cook?"

"Only at home," he said. "I come from a big
family."

"So did my husband." She felt surprisingly
comfortable mentioning Kevin, as if it were the most natural thing
on earth to do. "How big is big?"

"Three boys, three girls."

"Including you?"

"Including me."

"And you're the oldest."

"How did you know?"

"You like to take charge."

"You mean, I'm aggressive."

"No, I mean you know how to get things
done."

The look she gave him was pure heat and he
laughed.

"You have a way about you, Annie Galloway,"
he said and popped a piece of muffin into her mouth. He took a good
look at her. "Only child of older parents. You were spoiled
rotten."

The look of sorrow in her eyes almost brought
him to his knees.

"Only child." She cracked a large white egg
against the side of a stainless steel bowl then tossed the empty
shell into the trash pail under the counter. She reached for
another egg. "My parents married right out of high school. I came
along six months later." She chuckled and tossed more shells into
the trash pail. "You can imagine the whispering that went on around
here, can't you?"

"Makes you glad times have changed."

"Don't get me wrong. They loved each other
and they were planning to marry anyway but I don't think they were
planning on doing it quite so soon – or starting off with an
instant family."

He had the sense that he was treading into
uncertain territory but he took the next step just the same. "Are
they still together?"

She rested her hands on the counter and it
was a moment before she answered him. "I hope so," she said then
met his eyes. "They died just before I turned sixteen." She told
him in plain, unadorned language about the nor'easter that capsized
the small fishing boat and took the lives of Eve and Ron Lacy. "The
Galloways took me in. Can you imagine that? I was nobody but
Kevin's girlfriend and they opened up their hearts to me and made
me one of the family. When I think of what might have happened
–"

"I was seventeen."

She stared at him. "What?"

"I was seventeen when my mother died. My
father died two years later."

"Oh, Sam –"

"Courtney was four when the old man died. She
was the youngest."

"So you know," she whispered. "You know what
it was like."

"Yeah," he said quietly. "I know."

Their eyes met and once again they both
experienced a sense of inevitability that ran deep and true.

"You're lucky you have a big family," she
said. "There was somebody to take you in."
I was so young, Sam,
just a girl really and the world seemed so big and cold. Claudia
made a home for me . . . a real home . . . marrying Kevin only made
it that much better.

He shook his head. "Afraid not. My mother was
an only child and my father's family thought we should be broken up
and parceled out to foster homes. There was no way in hell I was
going to let that happen."
They weren't much more than babies .
. . the whole lot of us were scared shitless . . . the only thing
we had was each other . . . what else could I do?

"You mean, you took care of the rest of the
kids?"

"Not much choice," he said matter-of-factly.
"Nobody else stepped up to the plate."

"But you did," she said. "Somebody else might
have turned and run away."
You were only a kid yourself. Who
would have blamed you for handing it all over to somebody
else.

"I thought about it. Hell, there were days I
wondered why I bothered."
The night Tony broke his leg . . . the
weekend Courtney ran off with that guy . . . nothing prepares you
for any of it.

"But you didn't," she persisted. "You were
there for them when they needed you."
Claudia used to sit by my
bed until I fell asleep those first few months . . . she would hold
my hand and tell me I was safe . . . if only you'd had that
too.

"Warren helped me find my first serious job,"
he said as she poured the beaten eggs into the sizzling pan then
moved them around with a narrow spatula. "There wasn't much
available for a college dropout with five dependents but he knew I
was quick and hardworking and had the gift of gab and next thing I
knew I was cold-calling down on Wall Street."

The mid-1980s had been rife with financial
opportunities in the world of stocks and bonds. Sure the Ivy League
graduates with the MBAs had their pick of jobs, but there was still
plenty of room for a street smart kid driven by need rather than
ambition.

"Warren put me through college," she said as
they sat down at the kitchen table that had once belonged to Ellie
Bancroft. "I was the first winner of the Warren Bancroft
Scholarship. You had to be a fisherman's kid to qualify."

"A smart fisherman's kid."

"Good thing I was, otherwise somebody
might've thought the whole thing was rigged."

"A slam dunk?"

"Afraid so. If Warren can't help you
directly, he'll find a way to help you indirectly and he won't take
no for an answer."

"He told me about the work you're doing for
the museum," he said. "It sounded pretty ambitious."

She tapped her forehead with her index
finger. "I have all sorts of knowledge tucked away up there but no
place to use it. Did he show you the mock-up of how the whole thing
will look when it's finished?" She had an idea for a sculpture of a
fisherman's family but it had been so long since she'd even
attempted anything that ambitious that she couldn't bring herself
to broach the topic with Warren even though he had been encouraging
her to tackle something for the museum.

"No, but he did end up recruiting me to build
the canoes."

She made no attempt to disguise her pleasure.
"Then it looks like we'll be working together." She explained how
some of the lighting techniques she hoped to utilize needed to be
built into the structure of the boats they suspended from the
ceiling.

"Sounds like we'll be working closely
together," he said and they smiled at each other like two
lovestruck teenagers.

George and Gracie strolled back into the room
and surveyed the scene. Gracie indulged in a few delicate sips of
water from their bowl while George fixed Sam with one of those
patented stares cats were known for.

"He hates me," Sam said.

"George hates everyone but Gracie. Don't pay
any attention to him."

Gracie stepped away from the water bowl and
strolled out of the room, tail at full mast, with George close
behind.

"There's a metaphor here somewhere," Sam
said.

"Or a punchline." She gestured toward his
plate. "Eat your eggs before they get cold. There's nothing worse
than icy, rubbery scrambled eggs."

He made short work of his food then reached
over and grabbed a bite of her muffin.

"Hey!" she protested then remembered that she
had swept him out of Cappy's before he had a chance to grab a meal.
She pushed her plate toward him. "Here," she said. "Eat."

He said something to her, something earthy
and blunt and so sexual she almost melted right there on the spot.
Kevin's praise had been couched in metaphor and allusion. It had
vanished in the face of reality. Sam's praise was – oh, God, it was
flesh and blood and pure heat and she felt it in every part of her
body. It anchored her in the world yet somehow gave her wings.

A second later they were in each other's arms
again. He backed her up against the refrigerator. She wrapped her
legs around his hips and lowered herself onto his amazing erection,
taking him deeper than she thought possible. He groaned as she
tightened her muscles around him, and she grew stronger with every
movement of her body, every sound of pleasure she drew from him.
This was a kind of lovemaking she'd never known. There was nothing
gentle about their coming together. Their union was fierce and
urgent, as if they had waited all their lives for that moment and
for all they knew, maybe they had.

#

"Start the waffles, Nancy," Warren called
out. "They're pulling in the driveway."

Max was beside himself with excitement. He
leaped against Warren and placed his big hairy paws on his chest
and barked at full volume.

"I told you he'd be here," he said to the big
yellow dog and threw open the front door. "Go say hello."

Max tore down the steps and galloped across
the lawn full speed, barking at the top of his canine lungs. He
skidded to a stop inches away from Sam and Annie, then threw
himself at his master in a frenzy of pure pleasure.

"My second and third wives never gave me a
greeting like that," Warren said as he walked down the driveway to
meet them.

"Dog biscuits," said Annie, waving a large
Milk-Bone. "Wins their hearts every time."

He slipped an arm through Annie's while Sam
and Max bonded.

"You look happy," he observed as they
strolled back to the house.

"I am," she said.

"He looks happy too."

She glanced over her shoulder. "He does,
doesn't he?"

"I'm glad you two are getting along," he
said, "because Sam will be working on the museum with you."

Her eyes danced with amusement. "I'm sure
that was worrying you."

It was one of those days that made an old man
glad to be alive. These two young people – they would always be
young to him – had changed before his very eyes. Annie glowed with
pure happiness. Her loveliness had always been shadowed with worry
and, since Kevin's death, sorrow had taken its toll. This morning,
with her thick curly hair pulled back in a ponytail and her face
scrubbed clean of makeup, she was the girl he'd watched grow up
before the sadness came to stay.

As for Sam – hell, he hardly recognized the
boy. His laughter was loud and easy and his eyes never left Annie.
The expression in them warmed Warren's heart. It was everything
he'd hoped for when the notion first presented itself. Not that he
could take any credit for the laughter that rang out as they shared
blueberry waffles and stories at his breakfast table on that sunny
Labor Day morning. All he did was sell a house to Annie and give
Sam a place to stay while he sorted out his problems. Love was a
funny business. Just because you thought two people were right for
each other didn't mean spit if the magic wasn't there.

And all you had to do was look at Sam and
Annie to know the magic was present and accounted for.

You could keep your fancy offices and jet
planes and the deals that made page one of the
Wall Street
Journal
. This was what was real, he thought, as he watched the
two children of his heart as they whispered over their coffee. This
was what made everything else worthwhile. Pray God it was the real
thing.

#

Hall and Ellen met up with each other in the
doctors' lounge a little after ten a.m.

Ellen, still in scrubs, ran a hand through
her thick red hair and barely managed to stifle a yawn. "So now I
know why it's called Labor Day," she said as Hall poured them each
a cup of coffee. "Who thought Perrin and Bradsher would pop the
same day."

"It's the full moon," Hall said, handing her
a cup.

Ellen rolled her eyes. "Oh great. That
doesn't bode well for the doings on the green, does it?"

They found an empty table near the door and
sank wearily into their chairs. "Small town life beginning to
pinch, Dr. Markowitz?" he asked.

"I'm not sure," she said with her
characteristic honesty. "The social aspects can be a little
overwhelming for the newbie. The most I ever did on Labor Day was
readjust my beach towel."

"Welcome to New England," he said, wishing he
had a bagel and cream cheese to go with the coffee, "where idle
hands are the devil's workshop."

Ellen grinned at him. "Or something like
that."

"It won't be so bad," he said. "It's not like
we're being put in stocks or anything. Just a small booth near the
barbecue pit where we hand out coupons for free health
services."