Chances Are (21 page)

And they fell in love.

 
LOVE WAS A terrible thing when it came to a married woman with four children. The emotions it awoke inside Claire were as terrifying as they were exciting. This was how it felt to be happy. This was how it felt to be desired. This was how it felt to wake up in the morning with every single one of your senses alive with wonder.

This was everything she had tried for years not to think about, not to want, not to believe existed beyond the pages of a romance novel or on the screen at her local multiplex. She tried desperately to hide her feelings, but it was like trying to lure the genie back into the bottle before she granted your third wish.

Happiness was the one secret she couldn’t keep, no matter how hard she tried. His parents saw it on their faces. Her parents heard it in her voice, her laughter. Even her kids knew something was different, although they were still too young to be able to put a name to it.

To this day she didn’t know who told Billy, but one afternoon she was sitting by the community pool when she heard Kathleen cry out, “Daddy’s here!” and she looked up and saw Billy walking toward her. He looked cocky and unsure at the same time, her swaggering husband wearing his vulnerability on his sleeve.

This was a Billy O’Malley she had never met, a man she didn’t know, hadn’t imagined existed. She watched as the kids scrambled from the pool and ran toward him, wrapping him in wet chlorine hugs that left huge splotches on his jeans and T-shirt. Maire and Courtney clung to him like baby monkeys. Willow clutched his arm and sobbed, while Kathleen, always the least predictable of her brood, gazed up at him shyly, no doubt seeing the same handsome young knight in shining armor her mother had seen in him all those years ago.

Billy met her eyes over the heads of their children, and for an instant she saw that handsome young knight, too, and she was lost. They were family. Not even love could compete with that.

She had tried clumsily to explain it to Corin, but he couldn’t hear her over the powerful rush of love and anger that rose up between them, wiping out everything but the fact that she was leaving.

Ten months after she returned to Paradise Point, Billy Jr. was born, and there was no more looking back at what might have been. Corin was relegated to a secret, hidden part of her heart where he had stayed until Olivia moved to Paradise Point, and the possibility of seeing him again became all too real.

“Mom, can Grandpa and I have some of those cookies on the kitchen counter?” Billy was back, this time with Fluffy draped across his shoulders like a feline boa.

“No,” she said, noticing a horrifying cobweb dangling from the far corner of the living room ceiling. She doubted if Rose DiFalco had ever seen anything like that in her life. “The cookies and cake are for my party.”

“I just want one,” he said, “and it doesn’t even have to be chocolate.”

“I said no. Those cookies are reserved for women over the age of twenty-one.”

“That’s not fair! They won’t even eat them. Even the skinny ones are always on diets.”

“I’ll save you the leftovers. You can take a few to school in your lunch bag tomorrow.”

“That’s not the same.”

She aimed some spray cleaner in the general direction of the cobwebs, then wondered why she had ever thought wet dust would be easier to eliminate than dry dust.

“You and Grandpa had pizza tonight,” she said. “You love pizza.”

“Pizza’s not dessert.”

Oh, he was her son, no doubt about it. Billy Sr. used to say she was the only woman on earth who would turn down filet mignon and shrimp cocktail for a bag of Oreos.

“I think I saw a few ice cream sandwiches in the freezer,” she said. “That’s better than girly cookies, wouldn’t you say?”

He gave her one of those smiles that were his father all over again and tore off full speed for the kitchen.

She quickly ran the vacuum cleaner over the carpet, then wiped fingerprints from the coffee table with the sleeve of her sweater. The pets were all accounted for, and with a little luck Billy and her father wouldn’t turn her bedroom into a locker room. Now all she had to do was set up the card table, start the coffee, change into a pair of jeans that didn’t have peanut butter and jelly stains on the back pocket, and she would be ready.

The doorbell rang as she was setting out the coffee cups on the sideboard. She glanced up at the clock. Nobody would dare show up a half hour early on Claire’s night. Not if they valued their lives.

“Go away,” she said as Olivia and Rose marched right past her and headed for the living room. “The card table isn’t set up, I need to change my jeans, and—”

“Sit down,” Olivia ordered, pointing toward the recliner near the window.

“I don’t have time to sit down. I’m expecting company.”

Rose at least got the joke, but Olivia walked right over it.

“We have something to ask you,” Olivia announced.

“Ask me standing up.” She turned around and pointed at her rear end. “Billy’s PBJ.”

“Honey, I want you to sit down.”

Olivia spread a magazine over the cushion of the recliner, and Claire went light-headed with fear. “Is something wrong? Oh, God, it’s not one of my girls, is it?” With two of them in the Army, worry was woven into the fabric of every single waking moment.

“I told you she would think that,” Rose said to Olivia. “That’s always a mother’s first reaction.”

“Your girls are fine.” Olivia sounded bewildered, but then she had never mothered anything more than a series of Yorkshire terriers. “We’re here to talk about you.”

“About your future,” Rose said, taking a seat on the sofa opposite her.

“And ours.” Olivia perched on the arm of the sofa next to Rose.

“We have a future together?”

“We could have,” Rose said.

“Please tell me you’re not talking about sex.”

“What we’re talking about is better than sex,” Rose said.

“Damn right.” Olivia leaned toward her and whispered, “We’re talking pastry . . . English breakfast tea . . . chocolates . . .”

“Oh God,” Claire said. “Not those scary chocolates in the shape of—”

Olivia had one of those full-bodied laughs that women had been taught from childhood to tone down into a more ladylike chuckle. “Did you ever—” It was one of Olivia’s more remarkable anecdotes.

“If I did,” Rose said, “I’d take it to my grave.”

Claire was equally amazed. “I wouldn’t have thought there was enough chocolate in the state of New Jersey for that.”

Olivia winked. “Philip was nothing if not resourceful.”

“Be that as it may,” Rose said, “we’re not here to talk about Philip.”

“Rosie’s right.” Olivia switched back into business mode, a transformation that never ceased to amaze Claire. Who would have guessed that behind all that cleavage beat the heart of a top-notch businesswoman? “You know about the tea shop I’m opening.”

Claire nodded, eyes darting from Olivia to Rose as she tried to connect the dots. “Cuppa,” she said cautiously, wondering what in the world any of this had to do with her.

Olivia continued. “Yesterday Rose and I reached an agreement that will make her co-owner.”

Some women not only had all the money in town, they had all the luck as well. Talk about a sure thing. The charming McClanahan cottage, with its stone facade, red enamel door, and rose-covered trellis. A fragile china pot filled with fragrant Earl Grey. A platter heaped high with warm scones dripping with sweet butter or maybe delicate madeleines or tiny tarts bursting with vanilla-laced custard and topped with cherries and grapes glistening with sugar. And—no doubt about it—a cash register bulging with receipts as a line of customers snaked its way down Shore Road all the way to the library.

Separately both Olivia and Rose were formidable women. Together they just might be unstoppable.

“Wow,” she said as the picture sank into her brain. “You two are going to rake in the bucks.”

“We think so, too,” said Olivia, “but we need you to make it work.”

“I have an extra ten bucks. Would that make me a silent partner?”

“You misunderstand,” Rose said. “We don’t want your money. We want you.”

“Me?” Her bark of laughter made her cringe. “I pull drafts at O’Malley’s, ladies, for a group of old men, sports nuts, and slumming yuppies. If you’re looking for a waitress for your fancy tea shop, you’d better—”

“We want you to be front and center,” Olivia interrupted. “Both Rosie and I have our other businesses to run. We know you’re the one who kept O’Malley’s afloat on a day-to-day basis before Aidan came aboard full-time, and we also know you’re the one responsible for those sinful macadamia chunk cookies.”

“We’re asking a lot from you,” Rose said. “In the beginning, you might be doing some of the baking, acting as hostess, welcoming customers, making sure they’re happy, overseeing the small waitstaff.”

“You’ll be well-compensated.” Olivia quoted a figure that made Claire’s eyes pop.

“And we’d be willing to consider a partnership if things work out.”

“I’m already a partner at O’Malley’s,” she reminded them. “Twenty hours on a slow week, forty in high season.” And O’Malley’s was family, a fact she wasn’t likely to forget.

“And you’re barely scraping by. Tell me most of the proceeds aren’t being plowed back into the expansion Aidan’s been working on.”

“Olivia,” Rose said in a tone that would cause a normal person to rethink her position before uttering one more syllable. “That’s none of our business.”

Claire considered planting a big, wet kiss on Rose’s forehead, but it would take more than Rose’s indignation to stop Olivia when she was on a mission.

“She needs a change,” Olivia said to Rose. “She told me herself.”

“And she’s sitting right here,” Claire snapped. “If you have something to say, say it to me, Liv.”

Olivia could be unnervingly direct when she put her mind to it. “As long as you’re a fixture at O’Malley’s, you’ll never be able to move on with your life. You’ll be stuck in time and place until Aidan closes the doors and retires to Florida with Maddy and their seventeen grandchildren. Don’t you ever wonder what else is out there?”

For a second Claire thought she was going to choke on regret. It tightened her chest and filled her throat like thick, black smoke from a two-alarm fire. Olivia fought dirty. She always had. A friend wasn’t supposed to take your truths and shine a light on them for all to see. A friend didn’t fashion your dreams into something tangible, something so close you could reach out and grab it if you only had the guts.

“Why don’t you think about it overnight,” Rose suggested, clearly uncomfortable with the battle going on between Claire and Olivia. “You’re bound to have a lot of questions. We can all meet tomorrow and—”

“I have a better idea,” Olivia broke in, speaking directly to Claire. “Why don’t you decide now. You know what you want to do, and you know the excuses for why you won’t do it. O’Malley’s... Billy . . . the four other children who don’t even live here anymore . . . take your pick.”

Olivia had given her the perfect out. Sure it was sarcastic and meant to inflame, but it was a way out just the same. Olivia was already in a snit, so that wasn’t an issue, and Rose would simply be relieved to see this discussion come to an end.

“So what will it be?” Olivia prodded. “You can save us all a lot of trouble and just say no right now, and we’ll ask someone else.”

Suddenly Claire had her answer, and it wasn’t what anyone, least of all Claire herself, expected. “You’ll find someone else over my dead body.”

Come to think of it, once she told Aidan, it just might come to that.

CRYSTAL SKIDDED INTO the kitchen like Priscilla on a rainy day and stopped just shy of Maddy.

“Peter has a problem!” she announced, and Maddy swore she could see cartoon dialogue balloons swelling over the younger woman’s head.

“Another one?”
Uh-oh. Wrong thing to say
. This wasn’t your ordinary garden-variety pain-in-the-neck guest. This one took notes. Maddy forced a smile and tried valiantly not to notice the quintuple piercing marching around the young woman’s left nostril. “What can I do for him?”
This time.

“You don’t have high-speed access,” Crystal said in a tone of voice usually reserved for the reporting of UFO sightings. “How can we transmit files without high-speed access?”

“You’re welcome to use my dial-up connection in the office.” Her jaws ached from all the fake smiling she had been doing since the PBS crew checked in that morning.

“Dial-up? Pete’s gonna freak.”

“Tell Pete to consider it a reenactment of The Candlelight’s original Victorian charm.”

Crystal considered her for a moment. “Good one,” she said, “but I don’t think he’ll buy it.”

“I’m afraid he’ll have to. Our high-speed access went down last week, and the technician won’t be out to fix it until Friday.”

“Where’s the office?”

Maddy dried her hands on one of Rose’s fancy dish towels, then led the girl down the back hall toward the office. She popped the phone cord out of the computer and stretched it across the top of the desk. “Primitive,” she said, “but effective.”

The girl eyed it the way Maddy might eye a rampaging garden snake. “I’m not sure . . .”

“I’m sorry, but it’s the best we can do,” Maddy said. “Your other choice is to wait for the library to open tomorrow morning and log on down there. Now, if there isn’t anything else . . .”

“We’d love a pot of that great coffee and maybe some of those cookies you had out this afternoon. You can set it up right here on the desk.”

Count to twenty this time, Maddy, and remember assault and battery is punishable by law.
“There’s an assortment of snacks available in the parlor. I’ll make sure there’s a fresh pot of coffee waiting for you in there.” She would be damned if they dribbled Kona roast onto her keyboard; not on her watch.