Smitten (2 page)

Their eyes opened wide. “Aunt Elsie is coming?” they said in unison.

“She's agreed to come stay with us for the summer so you won't be on your own all day.”

Jason sprang out of his seat. “Mom, Aunt Elsie is a hundred years old. She talks to pigeons.”

“Aunt Elsie isn't a hundred years old,” Lizabeth said. She put her peanut butter and jelly sandwich in a plastic bag and dropped it into a brown paper sack, along with a can of root beer and an apple. “Aunt Elsie is seventy-two, and she's almost as good as new.”

“They keep her locked up in a camp for old people,” Billy said.

Lizabeth tossed the rest of her coffee down her throat. “I have to go. I don't want to be late the first day. And it's not a camp. It's a retirement village, and the man at the gate keeps trespassers out. He doesn't keep Aunt Elsie locked in.”

Billy and Jason looked at each other as if they didn't believe her.

Lizabeth stood at the front door. “You guys know the rules. Don't open the door to strangers. Call Mrs. Fee next door if there's a problem. My work address and phone number are posted on the bulletin board in the kitchen.”

Billy put his arm around his little brother. “Don't worry, Mom. I can handle it.”

“Mmmmm.” They were great kids, Lizabeth thought, but Jason had his “ice cream for lunch” look. Good thing Elsie said she'd be
there by ten. She kissed both boys and locked the door behind her.

The morning air felt cool on her face. Birds sang. Cicadas droned. Harbingers of hot weather, Lizabeth thought, taking a moment to listen to the insects. Bucks County was lovely in the summer. Lush and green, the air fragrant with the smell of flowers, cut grass, and fresh-turned dirt. The land bordering the Delaware River was a flat, rich floodplain, steeped in history, dotted by quaint towns unmarred by shopping centers and suburban sprawl. This was where Lizabeth chose to live. Chase Mills, Pennsylvania. Seven miles from Washington's Crossing and a forty-five-minute drive from downtown Philadelphia.

Lizabeth wore jeans and a yellow T-shirt, and she swung her lunch bag as she walked. The smell of coffee percolating in kitchens carried through the open windows. The newspaper boy cut through front yards, slinging his papers onto porches. Lizabeth could hear him marching up Gainsborough Drive.
Thunk
, the paper would hit against a front door. A patch of silence, then another
thunk
.

In new neighborhoods, like the small cul-de-
sac Matt was building, there would be the whir of central air conditioners. Lizabeth's street had no whirring sounds. The houses on Lizabeth's street were old, each one unique, built before the age of the subdivision, and they lacked some of the fancier amenities. The sidewalks were cracked and sometimes tilted from tree roots snaking beneath them. Houses sat back from the street, shaded by mature, thickly leaved maples and hundred-year-old oaks. Bicycles waited on wooden porches that wrapped around clapboard houses. It was a family neighborhood that was gently dealing with midlife crises. A few homes had succumbed to vinyl siding, but as yet no one had installed a hot tub. Dogs ran loose. Lawns were trimmed but were far from manicured. There was too much shade, too many roots, too many tiny feet tramping through yards for perfect lawns. Rosebushes lined driveways and grew along the occasional picket fence.

Lizabeth walked to the end of Gainsborough Drive and turned into the new, blacktopped cul-de-sac that pushed into a small bit of woods. There were three houses under construction. There was room for four more. A plumber's truck was parked in front of the first
house, which was a large colonial, almost completed. Two pickups and a Jeep were parked farther down the street. A radio blared. Hammers rhythmically slammed into wood, and from inside one of the houses a saw whined.

Lizabeth could barely hear any of it over the pounding of her heart. She wiped sweaty palms on her jeans and tried to move forward, but her feet refused to budge. She had no business being here! She belonged back home, in her kitchen.

Lizabeth, she told herself, you're a liberated woman. There's no reason for you to live your life in a kitchen. Yes there is, she silently wailed, I
like
my kitchen. I feel comfortable there. I know how to use a food processor. I do not know how to use a caulking gun.

Okay, bottom line. She didn't get paid for working in her kitchen. But why had she chosen this? What had she been thinking yesterday? The answer was obvious. She was thinking of her kids. She took a deep breath.

“Okay. I can do it,” she said under her breath. “I'm ready. Come on, feet. Get going.”

 

Matt's office was in a small corner of the colonial's unfinished basement. It consisted of
a desk, a file cabinet, and a telephone. He spent the first hour of each morning on the phone tracking down building inspectors, roofers, landscapers, and carpenters.

As Matt finished his first call, Howie White stood at the top of the stairs and yelled down. “Hey, boss, maybe you'd better come take a look at this. There's a lady standing at the end of the street, and she's talking to herself. I don't think she's got both oars in the water.”

“Is she pretty, about five feet six, with curly brown hair?”

“Yeah.”

“Her name's Lizabeth. Go fetch her. Tell her I sent you.”

Five minutes later Lizabeth stood in front of the desk. “I was just getting ready to look for you,” she said.

“I figured.” He cradled the phone to his ear and poured out two cups of coffee. “Howie had other ideas, though. He figured you were waiting to jump in front of a bus.”

“I was having trouble with my feet,” Lizabeth said. “They were cold.”

Matt handed her a cup of coffee. “Here. Maybe this will warm them up. I have to make a few more phone calls, then we can get out of
this basement. As you can see, this is a pretty small operation. I have a partner, but he's in the hospital in a body cast.”

“How awful. What happened?” Visions of failed building machinery filled her head.

“Fell off his kid's skateboard and broke his hip. Anyway, we own seven building lots on this cul-de-sac. We've got three houses going up. This one's sold. The other two are spec houses.”

He saw the question in her eyes. “That means we're building them on speculation. We're using our own money to build and hoping to sell the houses at a good profit when they're done. We subcontract plumbers, carpenters, roofers, drywallers, but we do a lot of the work ourselves.”

Lizabeth drank her coffee and watched him. He wore a black T-shirt tucked into a pair of faded jeans, and Lizabeth thought he was the most awesome man she'd ever encountered. He was a genetic masterpiece. He was freshly shaven, his blond hair was parted and combed, and his shirt and jeans still held the crease from being laundered and folded. Concessions to civilization, Lizabeth thought. She wasn't about to be fooled by the
crease in his jeans. Anyone with eyebrows like that and a tattoo on his arm had to be part barbarian.

“Okay, I'm done.” He pushed the phone away and flipped the switch on the answering machine. “I'm going to have you paint trim today.”

It was the easiest job he could come up with on short notice. She wouldn't have to lift anything heavy, and she wouldn't be near power tools. He handed her a can of white latex enamel.

“All you have to do is put a coat of this over the wood that's been primed.”

He gave her a narrow brush and led the way up the stairs. “You can put your lunch in the refrigerator in the kitchen, and feel free to use the phone to call home if you want to check on your kids.”

“Thanks, but they'll be fine. My aunt Elsie is coming to babysit for a while.”

Matt nodded. He didn't want to leave her. He wanted to stay and talk to her about her kids, her aunt Elsie, her sorry house. And he wanted to kiss her.

He wasn't sure why he found her so desirable. Lately, it seemed the women he met
were far less interesting than the houses he built. Lizabeth Kane was the exception. Lizabeth Kane seemed like she would be fun. She reminded him of a kid, waiting in line for her first ride on a roller coaster. She had that frightened look of breathless expectation. He thought about the kiss and decided it might be considered job harassment. He'd been called a lot of things in his thirty-four years. He didn't want to add “sexist pig” to the list.

“Well,” he said, “if you need me, just give a holler.” For lack of a better gesture he gave her a light punch in the arm and left her alone with her can of paint.

Two hours later Matt looked in on Lizabeth. She'd made her way up to the second floor, and she was happily singing the theme song from
Snow White
.

“Hi ho, hi ho…” Lizabeth sang as she swiped at the woodwork on her hands and knees.

“Which one are you?” Matt asked. “Dopey? Doc? Sneezy? Sexy?”

Lizabeth stood. “There's no dwarf named Sexy.”

Matt searched his mind. “Are you sure?”

“Trust me on this.”

She had paint on her arms, her jeans, her shoes. It was in her hair, splattered on the front of her shirt, and she had a smudge running the length of her cheek. Matt couldn't keep a grin from surfacing.

“You're a mess.” He reached out and touched a drooping curl. “You have paint in your hair.” He'd meant to keep his touch light, his voice casual and teasing, but his hand lingered.

Lizabeth's breath caught in her throat when he stepped closer. She was scared to death he was going to kiss her, and scared to death that he wouldn't. They watched each other for a long moment, assessing the attraction.

Matt had always felt fairly competent at second-guessing women—until this moment. He didn't want to make any mistakes with Lizabeth Kane. He didn't want to come on too strong or too fast and frighten her away. And he didn't want to make working conditions awkward. And besides that, she was a mother. He'd never before been involved with a mother. In his eyes motherhood was in the same category as a Ph.D. in physics. It was outside his sphere of knowledge. It was intimidating. And the thought of bedding
someone's mother felt a smidgeon irreverent. Not enough to stop him, he thought ruefully. Just enough to slow him down. He considered asking her out, but the words stuck in his throat.

He'd heard her brief intake of breath at his touch and wondered if it was an indication of desire or distress. Perhaps he'd just caught her by surprise. Probably she thought he was a dunce to be standing here with his heart on his sleeve. He dropped his hand and managed a small smile. “You have some paint on your cheek.”

Lizabeth blinked at him. “I thought you were going to kiss me.”

Matt grimaced. “I was thinking about it, but I chickened out.”

She could identify with that. She'd backed away from a lot of frightening situations in the past ten years. Now she was trying to broaden her horizons, get some courage, assert herself. It wasn't easy.

Well, what the heck, Lizabeth thought, this was a new age for women. There was no reason in the world why she had to wait for yellow belly here to kiss her. There was nothing written in stone that said he had to be
the aggressor. She took a deep breath, grabbed him by the shirtfront, pulled him to her, and planted a kiss on his perfect lips.

There was no response. Matt Hallahan stood like a wooden Indian with his arms at his sides, his lips slightly parted—in shock, rather than passion—his eyes open wide. Lizabeth checked him to make sure he wasn't hyperventilating and kissed him again. The first kiss had been sheer bravado. The second was much more indulgent.

Lizabeth took her time on the second kiss. She slid her hands up the front of his shirt, enjoying the feel of hard muscle, until the tips of her fingers tangled in his blond hair and her thumbs brushed along the lobes of his ears. She kissed him lightly, tentatively. She parted her lips and kissed him again with more insistence.

Matt's reaction was guarded. There were at least twenty men wandering around on the job site with easy access to the colonial. Howie was downstairs, installing a chair rail in the dining room, and Zito was hanging cabinets in the kitchen. Men's bodies weren't designed to conceal emotion, Matt acknowledged. Any second now he was going to do his Hulk
imitation—the part where the Hulk's body swells up so big it rips right out of its clothes. This didn't seem like a good time for that to happen, so he placed his hands on Lizabeth's waist and gently pushed her away. “This is a little embarrassing…”

Lizabeth snapped her eyes open, made a small, strangled sound and smoothed her moist hands on the front of her jeans. Don't panic, she told herself. You just threw yourself at a man who obviously didn't want to catch you. It's not the end of the world. You read the signs wrong. No big deal. In twenty or thirty years, you'll get over it.

“Well, I guess that didn't work out, huh?” she said. “It's okay; I mean, I can handle rejection.”

“You think I rejected you?”

“I'm sort of new at this. I don't date much. In fact, I don't date at all. And the problem is I want to be a fairy…”

He pulled her to him and kissed her with a lot of feeling and a decent amount of tongue.

He broke away and held her at arm's length, taking a moment to let his pulse rate slow. “Would you like me to spell it out?”

“Nope. Not necessary. I think I've got it put
together.” She licked lips that felt scorched and swollen. “Maybe it would be a good idea to talk about this later…when my ears stop ringing.”

Billy and Jason Kane had their noses pressed to the living room window when Elsie pulled up in her powder blue '57 Cadillac.

“Holy cow,” Jason said, “did you ever see a car like that? It's bigger than our garage. It's awesome.”

“Man, this is gonna be embarrassing,” Billy said.

Elsie parked in the driveway and shook her head at the house. Lizabeth was Elsie's favorite niece. She was bright and honest and tenderhearted to a fault. She was not especially practical, though. As a little girl she'd never allowed reality to get in the way of her imagination. And from the looks of her house, she hadn't changed much.

The gray paint was peeling down to bare wood, and shutters hung at odd angles. One
had fallen off completely and lay on the ground. Elsie looked up to the eaves, half-expecting to see bats roosting.

While she was studying the eaves, a squirrel jumped from a three-story oak tree onto the shake roof. Several pieces of the roof broke loose and came skittering down, crashing to the ground. The squirrel slid along with the rotted cedar shakes until it reached the galvanized gutter, where it clung for dear life. The gutter broke loose from its moorings and swung free at one end, hurling the squirrel into space for about twenty feet before it safely landed in an overgrown lilac bush.

“Next time stay off the roof,” Elsie shouted at the squirrel. “Damn pea-brained rodent.” She wrestled two huge suitcases out of the Caddy's backseat and headed for the front door.

“This is probably how you feel when you're in the water and you see Jaws coming,” Jason said.

Billy opened the door, and Elsie staggered in with the suitcases.

“Just because I'm having a time with these suitcases, don't for a minute think I'm some weak old lady,” Elsie said.

Billy shook his head vigorously. “No, ma'am. I didn't think that.”

“And don't think I'm boring, either. I ever tell you about the time I caught a dope dealer practically single-handedly? Smacked right into him with that big old Cadillac. That was before I was married to Gus.”

She gave the living room a cursory glance and moved into the kitchen. “Too bad you kids never got to meet Gus. We were only married for two months when he had a heart attack.” She opened the refrigerator and took stock. “You kids have lunch yet?”

“No,” Jason said. “And I'm allergic to liver. It makes me throw up.”

“Yeah,” Elsie said, “I know what you mean. I was thinking more in the way of ice cream. How about we have ice cream for lunch.” She set a half gallon of chocolate ice cream on the table and found three spoons.

“So what do you guys do for fun around here? You ever play bingo?”

 

Lizabeth watched Matt wipe the paint from the rim of the half-filled can and thump the lid secure with a hammer. She'd graduated magna cum laude from Amherst, but at the advanced
age of thirty-two she didn't know the proper way to close up a can of paint. It was embarrassing. She hated being a helpless female.

Matt slid the can into a basement corner and turned to Lizabeth. “Now you know just about everything there is to know about painting.”

She shook her head. “I don't know how to paint with a roller. After I learn how to use a roller, I'm going to paint my living room.”

“You don't need to learn how to paint with a roller. You go to a hardware store, and they'll give you a starter kit. It's easy.” He saw the doubt on her face. “Didn't you ever help your husband paint?”

Lizabeth almost burst out laughing at the thought of Paul Kane with a paintbrush in his hand. “My husband never painted. He hired people to paint.”

“How about your dad? Didn't he ever paint anything?”

“My father is Malcolm Slye. If you were from Virginia, you'd know that name. He's a third-generation tobacco baron, and he was smart enough to diversify. He works very hard, but he doesn't paint.”

“That's a shame,” Matt said. “There's a lot of
satisfaction to painting. One minute you've got a dirty, dreary wall, and the next thing you know it's fresh and clean. Instant gratification.” He unplugged the coffeepot and shut the basement lights off. “So you were the poor little rich girl, huh?”

“No. I was the rich little rich girl. I had a terrific childhood. I just never learned to paint.”

“Uh-huh. What happened to Mister Wonderful, the guy who hired painters.”

“You mean my ex-husband?” Her eyes narrowed slightly, and the line of her mouth tightened. “It turned out we had different expectations about marriage. Paul expected me to close my eyes to constant indiscretions, and I expected him to be faithful to me.”

“I'm sorry.”

Lizabeth waved it away. “Actually, I could have lived with that. What finally drove me out of the marriage was when he insisted that the boys go to boarding school. Paul had political ambitions. He wanted me to be a perfect hostess. He found the children to be a burden.”

“I don't think I like this guy.”

“He was very charming,” Lizabeth said.

“But he was a jerk.”

Matt studied her. She was okay. Really, okay. She had strength. “C'mon, I'm going to give you a ride home. And if you want, I'll take a look at your house.”

“I should warn you about my aunt Elsie first,” Lizabeth said. “Aunt Elsie is from my mother's side of the family. She's a little outspoken.”

“I can handle it. I'm pretty brave when it comes to old ladies.”

“You've never met an old lady like Aunt Elsie.”

Matt could hear the affection in her voice. “She must be something special.”

“She's…unique.”

Ten minutes later they drove down Gains-borough and Matt parked his Ford F150 in front of Lizabeth's house. The yard was tidy, and someone had planted clusters of flowers along the front porch, but the house itself was even worse than he'd remembered. His attention was distracted by the behemoth car in the driveway. “My God, what is that?”

“That's Elsie's car. If you see her on the road, give her a wide berth. She didn't learn to drive until last year, and she doesn't have it perfected yet.”

A small gray cat sat on the porch, watching their approach.

“This is Carol the Cat. He adopted us about a week ago.” She reached down and scratched the kitten's neck. The front door opened, and two small boys tumbled out.

“Mom! We've had the most awesome day,” Jason said. “Aunt Elsie's here. She took us for a ride in her car. It gets six miles to a gallon of gas. It's wicked.”

Billy was radiant. “She ran over the summer school crossing guard's hat and got a ticket. And then she clipped a parking meter downtown. The meter had a big dent in it, but nothing happened to her car. Mom, that car is like a tank!”

“I heard that,” Elsie said. “It wasn't my fault I ran over that policewoman's hat. She practically threw it in the middle of the road, right in front of my car.”

“Yeah,” Billy said, “she got real flustered when she saw us barreling down on her in the Cadillac. She tried to jump out of the way, and her hat flew off.”

Lizabeth winced. “Elsie, you weren't speeding with the boys in the car, were you?”

“I don't think so, but sometimes my foot sticks on the floor mat…”

“She wasn't speeding,” Billy said. “She was barely moving. We never went over twenty-five. It was that she was driving down the middle of the road.”

“It's that dang big car,” Elsie said. “It don't fit in one lane. When I get some money I'm going to get myself one of them nice little Japanese cars.” She noticed Matt standing to one side of the family group. “Who's this?”

“This is my boss, Matt Hallahan,” Lizabeth said. “He's come over to take a look at the house for me. Matt, this is my aunt, Elsie Hawkins.”

Elsie Hawkins had tightly curled steel gray hair, sharp blue eyes, and an uncompromising mouth. She was dressed in support hose, tennis shoes, and a tailored blue shirtwaist dress that came to just below her knees. Matt thought she looked like she could wrestle alligators and win.

Lizabeth affectionately ruffled Jason's hair. “And these are my sons, Jason and Billy.”

Both boys had brown hair that had recently been cut. They were dressed in board shorts and T-shirts and had skinned knees and quick smiles.

“Wow, he's got a tattoo,” Jason said. “Neat!”

Elsie looked at the tattoo. “What's that funny writing on it?”

“It's Chinese. I joined the navy right out of high school. We made a port call in Taiwan, and I got drunk and ended up with this tattoo.”

“Pretty fancy,” Elsie said. “What do those Chinese squiggles mean?”

“Uh…” He shifted from one foot to the other. “It's sort of a rhyme. It has to do with…sexual relations with a duck.”

Elsie clamped her hand over her mouth to keep from bursting out laughing. “That's terrible,” she said.

“I know what it is!” Jason said. “I heard it on cable television. It's…”

“Jason Kane!” Lizabeth said. “Don't you have a football to throw around?”

“Ferguson ate it.”

“Ferguson's our dog,” Lizabeth explained to Matt. “He eats things.”

Matt grinned. The place was a loony bin. He loved it.

Lizabeth made an expansive gesture with her arms. “Well, what do you think of the house?”

He looked around critically. Even if he
helped her, he doubted she could afford to do all the necessary work. His guess was she was trying to make it on her own, without her father's or her husband's money, and she was having a tough time of it. “Needs a little paint,” he volunteered. “Maybe a few new shakes for the roof.”

Elsie looked at him sideways. “Cut the baloney. What do you think it really needs?”

“A lot of paint. It has to be scraped and primed, then painted. It needs an entire new roof, new aluminum gutters, and all of the shutters need to be rehung.”

“So, you're in the construction business,” Elsie said. “I suppose you got ladders and paint scrapers and such. Why don't you stay for supper. We're having meat loaf.”

Lizabeth groaned. “Aunt Elsie, that's not very subtle.”

“I'm an old lady. I don't have to be subtle.”

Matt grinned. “Meat loaf sounds great.”

Elsie looked him over. “You a bachelor?”

“Yup.”

“You could do worse,” she said to Lizabeth.

Lizabeth glared a warning at Elsie. “He's my
boss
!”

“He make a pass at you yet?”

Lizabeth felt her ears burning.

“I knew it,” Elsie said, turning back to the house. “Supper'll be ready at five-thirty.”

An hour later Matt sat on the porch steps and reviewed his findings with Lizabeth. “The toilets are easy and inexpensive to fix. You can do them right away. I have some rollers and brushes you can borrow, and for a relatively small amount of money you can paint the interior. You can do it one room at a time, if you want. The floors are going to need a professional. You have a new water heater, and the furnace doesn't look half-bad. That's on the plus side.”

“Someday, this house is going to be beautiful,” Lizabeth said. “I'm going to paint it yellow with white trim, and I'm going to plant flowers everywhere.”

Matt leaned against the railing and closed his eyes. He was jealous of her, he realized. She had two kids and a wacky aunt, a dog, a cat, a house she loved. She had a future that was filled to the brim with life. Somehow, he hadn't fashioned that for himself. He lived in a rented town house, all alone. And he built houses for other people. It had always been enough, but right now it seemed depressingly deficient.

“Lizabeth, your house is beautiful now. It will always be beautiful. It doesn't have anything to do with paint or plumbing or petunias. Your house is beautiful because
you're
beautiful.”

It was a full minute before she could respond. No one had ever said anything like that to her before. It was the most perfect compliment she could imagine. Her eyes filled with tears, and she bit into her lower lip. “Thank you.”

“Oh damn, you're not going to cry, are you?”

“I'm very emotional. It's one of my faults.”

It was the sort of fault he could get used to, he thought. You would always know where you stood with her. She was guileless.

Jason ran across the lawn after a softball. He swept it up and threw it to his brother. “You want to play with us?” he asked Matt. “We need a pitcher.”

“Do I get to bat?”

“Sure, you can be up first, but you'll never get anything off of Billy. He stinks as a pitcher.”

Matt took the bat and knocked it against his rubber-soled boots a couple of times. He shuffled his feet and practiced his batter's stance. He looked Billy in the eye and set
himself back for the pitch. “Okay, Billy Kane, give me your best shot,” he said.

Billy slow-pitched him an underhand bloop. Matt smiled and swung, enjoying the feel of connecting with the ball. It was a perfect line drive, fast and hard, and zoomed straight as an arrow to Elsie's Cadillac, where it shattered the passenger-side window.

There was a full minute of silence.

“You're a dead man,” Billy said. “She's gonna kill you.”

“Quick, get the baseball,” Jason said. “We'll tell her a meteor did it.”

The screen door squeaked on its rusty hinges and Elsie stepped out onto the porch. “What was that crash?”

There was an audible gasp when she saw her car, and then her false teeth came together with a sharp
click
. She surveyed the group of bystanders with steely eyes and with her mouth drawn into a tight little line. Her eyes locked in on Matt, standing flat-footed, grinning his most endearing, sheepish grin, still holding the bat.

“Got good stuff on the ball?” she asked him.