Tell Me Lies (12 page)

“What effect is that?”

“As I remember, at stage one, you’re tight, and at stage two, you throw up.

“Oh, that’s awful.” She closed her eyes. “I remember. You were sweet.”

“Thank you. Then there’s stage three.”

“What happens at stage three?”

He tried to look innocent, which on C.L. was a dead giveaway. “I get laid.”

“Oh, no.” She turned back to the mirror and watched him watch her. “You turned me down once tonight; I don’t do multiple humiliation.”

“I didn’t turn you down,” C.L. said. “I said I was too old to do the twist in the back of a convertible at the Point.”

“If you’d wanted me bad enough, you’d have said yes.”

C.L. looked at her in the mirror and smiled, and she felt a little sizzle start inside her. He passed his glass over to her. “When the offer is serious, I will say yes. In the meantime, thank you, I will have another glass of wine.”

The phone rang fifteen minutes later while they were laughing about a high school disaster.
Damn,
Maddie thought.
I don’t want to talk to anybody. I feel good.
And she stopped and thought as she picked up the phone,
This is the first good time I’ve had in years.

“Maddie?” Brent’s voiced snapped over the line, and she gave a guilty start as she looked at C.L. Then she kicked herself. The hell with Brent; she had nothing to feel guilty about. The thought was depressing. She should have something to feel guilty about. Why should he be the only creep in the family?

His voice grew more exasperated, if possible. “Maddie, are you there?”

Behind his voice, Maddie could hear the sounds of balls rolling down wood alleys and hitting pins. For once he was where he was supposed to be, the louse. “What do you want?”

“Listen, I’m going to be late. Something’s come up.”

I bet it has. Well, something’s about to come up here, too.

“Maddie? Howie wants to talk as soon as we’re done here. But I want you home when I get there.”

“Right. No problem.” She looked back at C.L. and made her decision. This was her night. It was a shame to victimize good old C.L., but he’d bear up. “Take your time,” she told Brent. “I’ll just go to bed.” She pressed her lips together to keep from laughing out loud.

“Maddie? Are you laughing?”

“What would I have to laugh about?”

“Maddie, I went to the office before I came out here.”

“Oh.” She took a drink of wine.

“I want that box back.”

I bet you do
. “We’ll talk.”

He started to argue, but she wasn’t interested anymore. “Gotta go,” she said, and hung up on him. She turned and waved to C.L. “I’ll be right back.”

She ran up the stairs to the bedroom, where she checked her mirror. Okay, it was time to get serious here.
The man will go to bed with you,
she told herself,
but not here.
There she drew the line. And the one motel in town might as well put its guest register on the front page of the
Frog Point Inquirer,
which would be tacky. That left the Point, the place where Brent had been getting his. But C.L. didn’t want to go to the Point. So her job, should she decide to accept it, was to lure him up to the Point and inflame him. Or maybe inflame him here and then lure him.

It was at this point that she realized she was drunk, but she accepted it and moved on. It was unimportant except for the fact that if she weren’t drunk, she’d never be doing this at all. So it was good she was drunk. Also, tomorrow morning she could comfort herself with the fact that she’d been drunk. “It wasn’t my fault,” she could say. “I was drunk.” Looked at from this angle, drunkenness was a definite plus. She smiled at herself in the mirror.

Now, the clothes. She took off her shirt and cutoffs and pulled on a pale green sleeveless jersey dress with ten thousand tiny buttons down the front that popped out of their holes easily. That was good; easy on, easy off. She could see the outline of her bra through the thin cotton, so she reached under the skirt, twisting her hands high up to get at the catch. While she fumbled with her bra, she checked out her legs.

I have great legs,
she thought, but the white cotton underwear, that had to go. She pulled her bra straps down over her arms and fished the bra out through one of the armholes on her dress. Her breasts slipped down a little but not much, and the soft cotton dress felt wonderful next to her skin.
This is not a bad body,
she thought.
It’s not great, but it’s nothing to sneer at, C.L., old buddy.

“Maddie?”

His voice came from the bottom of the stairs. She’d been playing around too long. She stripped off her white cotton underpants and dropped them on the floor. Nobody committed adultery in white cotton underpants. She flounced her skirt a little, distracted by the breeze between her legs. How the hell had Brent’s chippie not noticed her underwear was missing? Of course, with crotchless, you’d get a breeze anyway. Did you take off crotchless underpants?

“Maddie? Are you all right?”

“Coming.” The last thing she grabbed and shoved in her dress pocket was one of Brent’s condoms from the box from his office. It seemed fitting.

C.L. was waiting for her at the bottom of the stairs. Maddie tried to float down, but she tripped on the last step and fell against him, and he caught her, and it wasn’t funny anymore. He was very real and very solid, and she didn’t have any underwear on so her breasts squashed against him, and he looked distracted enough to have noticed, and she wasn’t at all sure she wanted to do this.

“Are you okay?” he asked, and she took a deep breath and said, “Yes. Let’s go.”

“Where?”

“The Point,” she said firmly because she wasn’t sure.

“Ah, Maddie.” C.L. let go of her and stepped back. “Come off it.”

Maddie gritted her teeth in exasperation. “I’m serious. I want to go.”

He looked trapped for a minute, and then he said, “Oh,
darn,”
and slapped the newel post. “Can’t do it. No condoms. Sorry, but—”

She pulled the one from Brent’s box out of her pocket and handed it to him.

He looked poleaxed. “You’re serious.”

“Very.” Maddie stared at him wide-eyed, trying to look wholesome and innocent. “We can just talk if that’s all you want. But I think we should go for old times’ sake.”

“Right. Old times.” He sighed and put the condom in his pocket. “Okay, let’s go talk at the Point. But first we get another car. I don’t want to hear any crap from Henry about my car being up at the Point.”

“You’re thirty-seven years old,” Maddie said. “What do you care?”

“We’re talking Henry,” C.L. said. “I care a lot.”

They drove over to get Treva’s car and ended up with Brent’s Caddy since he’d driven with Howie to the alley. Maddie was delighted; now Bailey would think it was Brent on the Point, and she might get away with both her reputation and the experience of doing the wrong thing. “This is going to be great,” she told C.L., and he looked less than enthused, but she didn’t care.

Her victim days were over.

“Great.” Maddie opened her door.

“Where are you going?”

“Backseat.” She climbed in the back and closed the door behind her.

Terrific.

He’d known all along he should have stayed out of Frog Point, but he’d come anyway, reasoning that nothing much could happen in forty-eight hours. He’d check on Sheila’s little problem, ruin Brent Faraday, shake Henry’s hand and kiss Anna good-bye, and be gone. What could possibly go wrong? And now he was in a dark car with the one woman who completely screwed up his head every time he got near her, and she wanted sex. Well, so did he, but they weren’t going to have it. He had his pride, and whatever had inspired Maddie to come up here, it wasn’t desire. She was mad at Brent, and this was payback time. Well, she could forget it; he’d been in this movie before, and he damn sure wasn’t going to be in it again. He’d humored her this far because she’d been drinking and he was pretty sure he could wear her down and get the story of what was going on from her eventually, but he absolutely was not going to do anything else. Absolutely not.

“You know, you weren’t this slow twenty years ago,” Maddie said. “Come on.”

“Gee.” C.L. settled down in the driver’s seat. “I can’t hear the frogs.”

“C.L., there haven’t been any frogs at Frog Point for forty years. Get back here.”

C.L. rested his forehead on the steering wheel for a moment and then turned to look at her. She stared at him with fierce determination, her eyes huge in the darkness, her arms folded under her chest, willing him to get in the backseat. Her breasts were round and loose under the stretchy fabric. He remembered the night before in her front yard and how warm and soft she’d been in his arms. Then he remembered half an hour before at the bottom of her stairs and the lust that had almost flattened him when she’d fallen against him. And she’d handed him a condom. And he’d taken it.

He was pretty sure he wasn’t getting into that backseat.

“You have no bra on,” he said.

“It’s a symbol of my sincerity. I don’t have any underpants on, either.” She patted the seat beside her. “Come on.”

He really shouldn’t get into that backseat, especially since he knew she had an ulterior motive. It was a motive he was caring about less and less as his heart pounded harder and harder and all the blood left his brain, but it was there, and he needed to know what it was before he did something stupid. “Maddie, why are you doing this?”

“I can’t believe you!” she exploded. “I’m offering you my body, and you want to know why?” She glared at him.

This couldn’t be happening to him. It was everything he wanted and everything he didn’t want. C.L. groaned and banged his forehead on the steering wheel. Then he started to laugh.

“Okay,” he said finally. “But just remember, this time it was your idea. You seduced me.” He checked the emergency brake, locked the passenger door, and then got out, locking the driver’s door behind him. As he climbed in the back, she lost it and laughed.

“What’s so funny?” he asked her, his voice grumpy as he settled in beside her.

“You.” Maddie jerked her thumb toward the front seat. “The emergency brake. Locking doors. You’re so
careful.”

“Yeah, well, plunging over a cliff in the middle of intercourse is not my idea of a great climax.”

Maddie sniffed. “Twenty years ago you wouldn’t have thought of that.”

“Twenty years ago I didn’t have an emergency brake.” He peered out the window. “Christ, it’s dark.”

Maddie was losing patience with him. “Yeah. That’s why we’re up here instead of on Main Street. You gonna make your move any time soon?”

“Okay. Fine.” He grabbed her and made her jump, and then he kissed her hard, smashing her lips against her teeth as he forced her down on the seat. Her shoulder scraped the upholstery and his body was a bulky weight on top of her, and she squirmed under him.

“Wait a minute!” She shoved at him, trying to lever him off with her elbow, but he was too heavy, and his shoulders pinned her to the seat so she couldn’t roll away.
“Wait a minute.”

“Isn’t this what you wanted? Hot sex in the back of a big car?”

Something in his voice made her stop struggling, and when she did, he pushed himself off her, staying balanced above her on his hands. She couldn’t see his face, but whatever he was, he wasn’t overcome by passion. “You’re laughing at me,” she said, fury lacing her voice.

“Damn right, I’m laughing.” He didn’t sound happy about it. “And you deserve it. What the hell are you playing at?”

She shoved at his chest again. “Let me up.”

He pulled her into a sitting position and leaned back in his corner of the car while she straightened her dress, humiliated at her own stupidity. Why had she assumed he wanted her? God, she was dumb.

“Had a fight with old Brent, did we?” C.L. asked. She couldn’t see him in the gloom, but she could hear the disgust in his voice.

She jerked on her skirt again. “No, we didn’t.”

“I was just asking because as I remember, that’s how I got lucky the last time.” C.L.‘s voice eased a little. “Old Brent was fooling around with—”

“Stop calling him ‘old Brent.’”

“—Margaret, I think, and he pissed you off, and so you came up here with me.”

Maddie slumped back against the seat. The worst part was, he was right. She hadn’t dragged him up to the Point because she was overcome with passion for him; she’d dragged him up there for revenge. Twenty years, and she was still working the same game plan. What a fool. “Okay.” She sighed. “You got me. Not too bright, that’s me.” No wonder her husband played around.

“You want to tell me about it?”

Oh, yeah, that was exactly what she wanted to do. “No. I’ve made enough of a fool of myself tonight.”

“Hey, don’t think I’m not grateful.” C.L. patted her knee. “Brings back memories, wrestling with you.” He laughed. “Boy, was I surprised that night when you went all the way.”

“Yeah.” Maddie leaned her head back on the seat, too depressed to hold it up anymore. “I was surprised, too. Not my plan at all.”
But then nothing works out the way I plan.

“I never could figure out why you picked me,” C.L. went on. “It sure as hell wasn’t my technique. Equal parts lust and fear. That couldn’t have been pretty.”

She rolled her head on the seat to look at him. “You were funny.”

C.L. groaned a little. “Oh, thank you.”

“No.” Maddie shook her head. “I mean, funny on purpose. You made me laugh. I had fun.”

“Yeah?” He sounded a little vulnerable still, even though it had been twenty years ago.

“Yeah. You were cute. And nice.” She thought for a minute. “You weren’t trying to be a big macho stud, you know. You were just really nice and really glad I was there.”

“Glad is an understatement. I was in ecstasy.”

Maddie laughed in spite of her gloom.

He reached out his arm and touched her shoulder. “Come here and tell me about things.”

She stiffened. “What?”

C.L. shook his head at her. “I realize I’m not getting laid, but that doesn’t mean I can’t cop a cuddle. Come here and let me hold you.”

Maddie hesitated and then slid over. He put his arm around her and patted her shoulder, warm and comforting. She took a deep breath and inhaled the honeysuckle and began to feel better. “This place makes me feel good,” she said. “Maybe it
was
the good old days when we came up here.”

C.L. shook his head again. “Not as I remember it. Life was just one disaster after another.”

Maddie craned her neck up. “Including me?”

He tapped her gently on the head. “Especially you. You dumped me and broke my heart.”

She leaned closer to him, her cheek brushing the softness of his chambray shirt. “Did you really think I was going to drop Brent for you?”

He was quiet for a minute. “No,” he said finally. “But I was still wiped out when you didn’t.”

Maddie straightened up. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. I thought, well, that you were just after One Thing, and when you’d gotten it, that was enough. I never dreamed—”

“Forget it.” He pulled her back to him. “That was twenty years ago. A lot of sex has gone under the bridge for both of us.”

Maddie snuggled closer, nestling her cheek against the hardness of his chest. She felt much better. Good old C.L. “Yeah, but that was my first time. That makes a difference.”

“Mine, too,” he said, and she sat straight up, smacking his chin with her head. “Ouch!” he said, and grabbed his jaw.

Maddie gaped at him. “That was your first time, too?”

“Yes.” He took his hand away from his chin. “Jesus, woman, be careful. You got a head like a rock.”

Maddie sat back. “Well, that explains a lot of things.”

“Like what?”

She turned back to him. “Like why when it was all over you said, ‘Was that as bad for you as it was for me?’”

C.L. scowled at her. “I never said that.”

“You did.” She started to laugh. “I thought you were being funny. But it was bad.”

C.L. shook his head. “There is no bad sex. Only some that is less good.”

“That was bad. It was uncomfortable and awkward and messy, and I felt stupid.”

C.L. sighed. “Thank you.”

“The second time was better,” she offered.

“That must have been Brent. We didn’t do it a second time. You never spoke to me again after that night.” C.L. slouched down in his seat. “I came to your locker the next morning and you turned away. God, what a comment on my performance.”

“It wasn’t Brent,” Maddie said. “We did it twice that night.”

“Oh.” C.L. stopped, struck by the memory. “That’s right.”

Maddie pulled back, outraged. “You didn’t remember?”

“Honey, that whole night is just one blur of lust for me. What you took for humor was probably my idea of foreplay. You know.” He made his voice high and squeaky. “ ‘That was pretty bad; let’s try it again till we get it right, okay?’ ”

She laughed and he put his arm around her again. “You never sounded like that.”

He pulled her closer. “I did inside. God, I was scared.”

“Of me?”

“Of you, and the backseat, and not being able to do it right and then of not being able to do it again. Even after that night, for years afterward, every time I had sex I’d think, ‘This is it. I’ll never have this again. I’ll never get another woman to do this again. My life is over—’”

“Stop it,” she said, laughing again. “You’ll have me in tears.”

“In fact, even now . . .”

“Yeah? What about now?” She pulled herself up to look in his eyes, but it was so dark she was almost nose to nose with him before she could see them. “Are you married?”

C.L. blinked at her. “No. I’m divorced. Ten years ago.”

His voice was final, but she wanted more. “Why did you get divorced?”

“She liked money. It didn’t look like I was ever going to have any. We fought about it, and after a while, we just hated each other. It seemed enough.”

Maddie sat up a little in outrage. “She married you for money?”

“No.” C.L. shook his head. “No, that wasn’t fair. It was more than that. We were screwed up from the beginning.”

“What happened in the beginning?”

C.L. frowned at her in the gloom. “What is this?”

“You disappeared from my life,” Maddie said. “I want to know what happened. I know the life story of everybody in Frog Point. It’s pretty interesting to run into a mystery for a change.”

C.L. shrugged. “Not much mystery. I ran into Sheila about twelve years ago when I was home visiting. She’d been working as a secretary for a couple of years after high school, and we looked at each other and saw what we wanted, and then it turned out neither one of us had looked hard enough.”

“She wanted money,” Maddie said. “And she saw that in you?”

“She saw an older guy who’d gotten out of Frog Point and lived in the city and wore suits to work. Then we got married, and it turned out that I was just me, and she found out she missed Frog Point, and I wouldn’t move home, and we didn’t have the money to live the high life she wanted, so there was nothing to hold us together.” He sighed. “It was an honest mistake. No bad guys, just two fuckups.”

Maddie didn’t want to ask the next question, but she had to. “What did you see?”

“What?”

“What did you see in Sheila?”

C.L. sat very still for a moment. “I saw a sweet, pretty girl who wanted to be with me.”

“And that’s all it took?”

“That’s a hell of a lot.”

“You must have missed her when she left.” Maddie bit her lip. “Is divorce . . . hard?”

“It’s hell,” C.L. said, but there didn’t seem to be much pain in his voice. “It feels good when it’s over. Takes about a year to come through it if you don’t care much. If you love each other, I understand it takes forever.”

She was quiet for so long, he bent over her to see if she was asleep.

“Hello?”

“Just thinking.”

“Oh?” His voice was light. “Thinking about divorcing old Brent?”

Maddie drew a deep breath. “Well, up till now I was thinking about killing old Brent, but I’m not so mad anymore.”

“Why were you mad before?”

“He’s cheating on me.”

C.L.‘s laugh sounded like a snort. “Oh, there’s a surprise. And one mystery solved for me.”

“What?”

“Why you’re up here, doing a remake of The Night We Lost Our Virginity. Revenge, Part Two. And they say history doesn’t repeat itself.”

“Maybe not,” she said.

C.L. leaned back away from her. “Don’t try to soft-soap me now. The ugly truth is out.”

“That’s a joke, right?”

“About half.”

“Because I think you’re wrong.” Maddie stopped for a minute, trying to find the right words. “I mean, I came up here that night to pay him back, but that’s not why I stayed. I had a good time. Except for the sex.”

C.L. groaned. “God, that makes me feel so much better.”

Maddie leaned closer so she could see his face. “Look, you want honesty? The sex was not good. But the holding and the laughing part was great. You were sweet. You made me feel good. I liked you a lot.”

“So why did you marry Brent?”

There was sarcasm in his voice, but she answered him seriously. “I don’t know. I’ve been thinking about that a lot. Everybody knew I was going to marry him, and if everybody knew it, it must be true, so I never considered anything else. By the time I came up here with you, we’d picked out a silver pattern. I had spoons. That made everything seem irrevocable. I had an identity. I was going to be Brent Faraday’s wife. I know that sounds stupid, but I just never considered anything but marrying Brent.”

“I know,” C.L. said. “That’s the way we all thought back then.”

“I still did until yesterday,” Maddie said. “That’s why I was so mad at him.”

“Was?”

She craned her neck a little to look up at him. “You’ve sort of changed my mind.”

“Don’t let me do that,” C.L. said. “Go back to being mad at him.”

“No, I mean it. This is nice. This is the warmest I’ve felt in a long time. If Brent’s just going out to get sweaty with some bimbo, he’s slime, but if he’s finding this, this
comfort
with someone else, I think I can understand.” She snuggled closer and C.L.‘s hand closed on her shoulder again. She felt a rush of peace flow through her that was so intense it was physical. “I feel great. You’re wonderful.”

He patted her shoulder, “Easy there. Let’s not lose our grip.”