“Two kids and a housekeeper. You’re not going.”
Southie sighed. “Kelly’s not going to be happy.”
“Such is life.”
Southie hesitated and the silence stretched out. “All right then,” he said, standing up. “You going to see Andie again?”
“No. You have a good evening.” North flipped the page back to where it had been as a signal for Southie to leave and saw the “Andiana” in the middle of the page again. “Damn.”
“What’s wrong?” Southie said.
“I made a mistake.” North flipped the pad shut, annoyed with himself.
“Sending Andie down there?”
“What?” he said, looking up.
“You think you made a mistake sending Andie down there?”
“No,” North said, and then thought about Andie, down in the wilds of southern Ohio. She might like it. She’d been wandering around ever since they’d divorced, moving someplace new every year, teaching in some really godforsaken places. Maybe that had been his mistake, keeping her in the city. Trying to keep her at all. He shook his head. “No, it wasn’t a mistake. She’ll handle things.”
“Yeah, she will,” Southie said, his voice odd, and when North looked up, he saw Southie regarding him sympathetically. “Maybe you should go down there. Get out of the office, check to make sure she’s all right. Spend a night in the place so you know what it’s like.”
“She’s fine.”
Southie waited a moment and then said quietly, “You could have gone after her, you know.”
North looked at him blankly. “Why would I go after her? She’ll be fine down there.”
“Not now. Then. When she left. You could have gone—”
“No.”
“You ever think maybe that divorce was a mistake?”
“No,” North said, putting as much “you-should-leave-now” in his voice as possible.
“Because I always thought it was,” Southie said. “If you’d gone after her, you could have gotten her back. That’s all she wanted, she was just lonely—”
“Was there anything else?” North said coldly. “Because unlike you, I have work to do.”
“Right. Well, you have a good time with your work,” Southie said, and left, shaking his head.
Damn it. The divorce hadn’t been a mistake. She’d been miserable. He’d been miserable because she was miserable. Going after her wouldn’t have changed that. They were both happier now. He had work to do.
She’d looked so good, warm and round; sounded so good, the old huskiness of her voice brushing down his spine; moved so good, her step still in that old rocking rhythm—
And now she was getting married again. Good for her. Moving on …
He pulled his notebook back in front of him and then thought, Maybe good for her. Because Southie was right, he didn’t know anything about this yahoo she was getting engaged to. She probably didn’t, either. She’d married him after twelve hours of phenomenal sex, she could be lunging into another mistake. And she hadn’t smiled. She’d smiled all the time when they were married. In the beginning.
He picked up the phone and called the detective agency the firm used and ordered a background check on Will Spenser.
Then he flipped open the notebook to go back to work and saw the “Andiana” blot.
No, he thought, and ripped out the page and copied the whole thing over again. With no mistakes.
* * *
By late afternoon the next day, Andie had finished packing and tying off the loose ends of her life. There weren’t many loose ends since she’d been moving around the country for ten years, which tended to limit most ends, loose or otherwise, but she did call Will in New York to tell him the good news. “Ten thousand dollars, Will. It’ll pay off all my debts with some left over. I’m being practical and mature here.”
“I don’t care about your debts,” he said, sounding exasperated, and she pictured his handsome boyish face, scowling at her for the two seconds he could hold a scowl before he started to grin again. “I’ll pay your debts. What I’d really like to hear is that you’re going to marry me.”
Of course, Andie thought, and said, “Maybe.” She heard a thunking sound on the other end of the phone. “What’s that?”
“That’s me beating my head against the wall.”
Andie grinned. “That’s you beating the phone against your mouse pad.”
“Same difference. Do you take this long to answer all your marriage proposals?”
It took me five seconds to say yes to North. “Yes. I ponder them, and the guys get bored and wander off. Will, I want to do this, it really is important to me to be free and clear financially before I start a new life. I’ve been spinning my wheels for ten years. I want a new start with nothing left over from before.”
“Okay,” he said in that easygoing voice she loved. He was so Not-North. “Call me often. Tell me you love working with kids and want to have twenty.”
“Twenty?” Andie said, alarmed. “I don’t want any.”
“Well, maybe you’ll change your mind.” Will hesitated and then he said, “You won’t be seeing North, will you?”
Andie frowned at the phone. “Are you jealous? Because, trust me, he’d forgotten I existed until I showed up in his office. And no, I won’t be seeing him.”
“Nobody has ever forgotten you,” Will said with feeling. “Just remember who you’re potentially engaged to.”
“How could I forget?” Andie said, and moved on to the I-love-yous before North became a permanent part of their conversation. Then she picked up the last of her three suitcases and her CD player and went out to deal with her mother, who was standing on the sidewalk in front of her little brick German Village cottage in her jeans and faded Iron Maiden T-shirt, looking worried as she stared at Andie’s ten-year-old bright yellow Mustang.
“I don’t like this,” Flo said, for the fortieth time, her long, curly, graying hair bobbing as she shook her head. “I dreamed about you last night. You fell into a well.”
“Thank you, Flo.” Andie opened the hatchback. “That’s encouraging.”
“It means your subconscious is calling to you. You’ve been repressing something. That’s what the water means anyway. The falling part is probably about being out of control, or since it’s you, maybe it’s about running away. You know what a bolter you are.”
“I am not a bolter,” Andie said to her mother, not for the first time. “I go toward things, not away from them.”
“I think you got the bolting thing from your father,” Flo said. “You’re very like him.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Andie said coldly. “Except that I don’t desert children, so no, I’m not like him.”
“Don’t go,” Flo said.
“Because you had a dream? No.” Andie put the suitcase in the car next to the sewing machine she’d already stashed there.
“There was so much negative energy in your marriage,” Flo fretted.
That wasn’t negative energy, that was raging lust. “I’m not revisiting my marriage. I’m taking care of two orphaned kids for a month—”
“This is a terrible time astrologically,” Flo went on as if she hadn’t spoken. “Your Venus is in North’s Capricorn—”
Andie slammed the hatchback closed. “Flo, my Venus isn’t anywhere near North. If his Capricorn was in my Venus, I could see your point, but it’s staying here in Columbus while I go south.” She went around and opened the back door of the car and shoved over the boxes of school supplies that Kristin had given her to make room for her stereo while her mother obsessed about her life.
“North is a powerful man, and you’re still connected to him.” Flo frowned. “Probably sexual memory, those Capricorns are insatiable. Well, you know, Sea Goat. And of course, you’re a Fish. You’ll end up back in bed with him.”
Andie slammed the car door. “You know what I’d like for Christmas, Flo? Boundaries. You can gift me early if you’d like.”
“If you keep seeing North, he’s going to get you again, and you were so miserable with him—”
“I’m not seeing North. I’m going to have a stable, secure relationship with a good man who loves me and won’t desert me for his career. Which reminds me. I left that stupid suit jacket on the bed, so the next time you’re at Goodwill, drop it off, will you? I don’t know why I kept it. I’m never going to be near anybody who’ll want me to wear a suit again.”
Flo folded her arms. “Will’s a Gemini. Volatile. Well, he’s a writer. You’re not sexually compatible, you’re both so scattered. You must be all over the place in bed.”
“Boundaries, Flo,” Andie said, thinking, The sex is just fine. Not wall-banging, earth-shattering, oh-my-god sex, but fun and energetic and damn satisfying just the same. Wall-banging, earth-shattering, oh-my-god sex was probably for people in their twenties. At least that was the last time she’d had it. “Will and I are good. And I don’t believe in astrology. Or dreams.” She looked sternly at Flo.
“Of course you don’t, dear. Did you get the birth signs for the children?”
“The boy is a Taurus and the girl is a Scorpio. And yes, even if it turns out that means they’re going to kill me in my sleep, I’m still going.”
“Well, the boy will be all right. You can always count on a Taurus. Steady as they come. Strong. The Bull.” She looked thoughtful. “They like things, you know? Good food, comfort, they’re very materialistic. If you need to win him over, that could help.”
“I’d think good food and comfort would win anybody over,” Andie said, and Flo looked at her curiously.
“Now why would you think that? The little girl’s going to be completely different. Intense. Secretive. You won’t buy her with comfort. And you won’t be able to bamboozle her, either. Scorpios. They’ll kill you as soon as look at you. They like sparkly things, though. You might get her with sequins.”
“Flo, she’s a little girl.”
“Although I’ve always liked Scorpios. They’re interesting. And they’re survivors. Taurus, too, those are both survivor signs. Tough kids. They’ll make it without you.” Flo bit her lip. “Andie, don’t go.”
“I’m going.” Andie opened the driver’s side door to escape before her mother started on rising signs. “I’ll be back in a month, and everything will be fine.”
“No it won’t.” Flo took a deep breath. “It’s not just the dreams and the stars. I read your cards last night. The Emperor was crossing you. That’s power and passion, so it has to be North. It was a bad, bad reading. You’re going down a path that’s all conflict and struggle. There’s no peace there. Will can’t help you, he’s not strong enough for you. North’s too strong.”
“Mother—”
“Leave both of them,” Flo said, serious as death. “I’m scared for you, Andie.”
“Well, stop it,” Andie said, and got in the car. Then she got out again and hugged Flo, who hugged her back, hard. “Sorry, Mom. I love you much. Don’t worry. In a month, I’ll be back and living here in town and you can run the cards for me every day if you like.”
“You don’t understand,” Flo said. “You’re not a mother. When you have a child, you can’t let her go into danger, you have to be there for her—”
“Flo, I’m thirty-four. The child part is over.”
“It’s never over,” Flo said, and Andie shook her head at her obtuseness and got back in her car.
“I’ll call you while I’m there,” she said, and put the Mustang in gear, and then waved at her mother in her rearview mirror as she drove away.
Sea goat, she thought.
A little Flo went a long way.
* * *
Andie headed south on I-71 and then turned off onto a winding two-lane highway and then from there onto another narrower road that moved into a heavily wooded area, making the drive dark in the middle of the day. The general air of desolation was not helped by the fact that she saw only two other cars once she passed the last sign of civilization—a shopping center—before she hit New Essex, the depressed little town that marked the turnoff to the long dead-end road the house was supposed to be on. By then the sun was going down, so fifteen miles later, when she saw the battered sign that said ARCHER HOUSE in the middle of some weeds, she pulled off to the side of the road in the deepening twilight and got out to investigate.
There had been a drive next to the sign, but it seemed to have collapsed. What was left was a steep slope, not anything she’d want to drive down if she had a choice.
She got back in the car and drove slowly over the edge, her wheels crunching on sparse gravel.
The road dipped down sharply, scraping the Mustang’s front fender, which made her shudder, and then leveled off into the pothole-laced lane that wound through the trees for about a quarter of a mile and came out into a meadow gone to seed. Beyond that an ancient three-story stone house rose up, flaunting two rose windows, a crumbling tower, and a moat, all its windows dark in the twilight and beyond that more clustered trees over which crows circled and cawed. “The House of Archer,” Andie said to herself as she slowed to take it all in. Well, it was a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year.
She followed the drive around to the side where a little bridge crossed the moat onto an untended stretch of pavement that split, the right going to the front of the house and its weathered, stone-arched entrance and the left to the back and a large, weedy flagstoned yard beside a row of garages that had probably once been stables.
She pulled the Mustang up in front of the garages and got out, looking around the deserted yard as she slammed the door, the sound echoing in the gloom. The place wasn’t just neglected, it was slovenly: weeds everywhere, the flagstone broken, the steps to the back door crumbling. The house was plainer in back, with just a single column of porch topped by bay windows, one to each floor, the window frames peeling and the gutters rusting, and everything oppressed by the bleak gray stone.
And all of it was really wrong. North wouldn’t leave property looking like this. Not for two years. And he’d have made sure there was somebody there to greet her when she pulled up.
She shook her head and got one of her suitcases and headed for the house, now really wary of what she was going to find. She pushed the back door open, banging the case on the frame, and then went through a small mudroom and into a big, cold, gloomy sitting room filled with heavily carved Victorian furniture including an ornate couch covered in green-striped silk, green-striped bolsters against each arm, and several side chairs covered in threadbare needlepoint.
She opened a side door into another cold room, this one all mahogany and brass, with a long, heavy dining table surrounded by equally heavy, ornate chairs.
There was another door in the opposite wall, and she opened that one, feeling more and more like Alice through the Looking Glass, but this time, light hit her as she walked in. It was a huge, white kitchen, but a less welcoming heart-of-the-house would be hard to imagine, nothing like the kitchen full of color North had given her in Columbus. Every surface was scrubbed and empty except for the long wood farmhouse table in the center.
A boy sat at the end, all shoulder blades and elbows, hunched over a bowl of something orange, his brown hair falling into his eyes as he looked up at her from under his thick lashes, his mouth set in a tight, hard line. Sitting close to him was a thin little girl cupping her hands around her own bowl of orange, her pale gray-blue eyes narrowed under her long, tangled white-blond hair, her T-shirt almost covered by all the stuff she had strung around her neck: an old strand of discolored purplish plastic pearls, an ancient locket on a pink ribbon, a string of tiny blue shells, a blue Walkman on a black cord, and a glittery bat on a black chain.
Wonderful, Andie thought, and said, “Hi.”
Also by Jennifer Crusie
Bet Me
Faking It
Welcome to Temptation
Crazy for You
Tell Me Lies
Maybe This
Time
Wild Ride (with Bob Mayer)
Agnes and the Hitman (with Bob Mayer)
Don’t Look Down (with Bob Mayer)
Dogs and Goddesses (with Anne Stuart and Lani Diane Rich)
The Unfortunate Miss Fortunes (with Eileen Dreyer and Anne Stuart)
Praise for Fast Women
“A dispirited divorcée goes to work for a detective agency with all the resulting comedy and romance you’d expect from Crusie.… Crusie seems incapable of writing a boring page or one that’s not aglow with the sparks of wit and romance. Crusie is smart and sassy about the things a woman has to do to make love work.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“A detective agency may be a sure setting for mystery and adventure, but in Crusie’s latest, a likable cast of characters also finds sex, love, and empowerment.… The novel’s provocative title says too little about this entertaining romantic caper, which will satisfy fans and new readers alike.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Wise and witty … When a story leaves me feeling that I have learned something important about life and love, then I know that the book will be a keeper for me. Fast Women is a story about the resilience of the human spirit, a story about personal growth and the importance of self-knowledge … but most of all, Fast Women is a book that I sat down and read right through and then sat back down and read it again.”
—The Romance Reader
“[Fast Women is] sheer reading enjoyment.… Crusie is hopelessly romantic and hilariously funny. Highly recommended.”
—Library Journal
“With humor, irony, and a whole lot of wit, Jennifer Crusie straps in her readers and takes them on a memorable ride. This is a master storyteller!”
—RT Book Reviews
“Crusie scores again with a hilarious romp through the lives of several headstrong women and the men who love (and sometimes hate) them. Crusie spices up her pages with some of the most intriguingly complex and quirky characters in fiction, then mixes in some murder and mayhem just for fun—the perfect recipe for a delightful read.”