Love to Love You Baby

  * * *

  Keely left her suitcase on the front step and walked around to the kitchen entrance, hoping to be able to sneak up the back stairs without anyone seeing her.

  The red-eye flight from Arizona had gone by too fast, thanks to a stiff tail wind that had gotten them into Philadelphia almost an hour ahead of schedule, so that she could catch an earlier shuttle to Allentown.

  She hadn’t slept on the plane, had only used the hotel room to shower and change before heading to the airport in the hope of getting out of town before Jack could find her.

  If he’d even looked for her.

  Maybe she should have called ahead, used the telephone on the seat back in front of her, asked Petra or Sweetness to meet her at the airport. But she hadn’t, and she had arrived early anyway, and a taxi was more anonymous, which suited her; she still had this stupid tendency to start crying for no reason, no reason at all.

  Just because she’d made a total fool of herself, attacking Jack like some love-starved idiot, then running away because he’d taken what she’d offered.

  Of course, she could sit him down, talk to him. Ask him what those minutes in the motel room had meant to him, told him what they’d meant to her. Sure. She could do that. Right after she stuck a sharp stick in her eye. What in this world could be worse than saying, “Hey, I think I love you,” and then waiting for the words, “Hey, thanks, but I was only out for a good time, weren’t you?”

  Blinking back tears, she turned the knob on the back door and stepped into the kitchen, then stopped dead. Aunt Sadie was there, sitting at the kitchen table with a middle-aged woman in a dark blue suit. The woman had her gray-streaked hair pulled back in a tight bun. Two spots of artificial red stained her cheeks and wire-rimmed glasses sat low on her incongruously pert, turned-up nose.

  The social worker. Had to be the social worker. Who else could it be but the social worker?

  Except that Sadie—clad in a bright pink sundress and wearing red high-top sneakers—was holding the woman’s hand, obviously reading her palm.

  “... a strong heart line, Edith. That means—oh, hullo, Keely,” she said, letting go of the woman’s hand, then sitting back comfortably on her chair. “Were you out looking at the pool already? I told you we’d have the man in to fix it, didn’t I? We just needed a new part for the pump. And just look at your eyes. What a shame. We hoped the change in climate might get rid of those pesky allergies. Jack’s taken the luggage upstairs, I imagine, since he isn’t with you and we all know he’s home. Did you two have a nice flight back from visiting your Aunt Mary in Arizona?”

  Keely had never heard so much information, and so many blatant lies, in her life—at least not at one go. She bit her bottom lip, trying very hard not to say, “Huh?” and then just smiled at the lady in the blue suit. “Where... where’s Candy?” she asked at last, looking down at the empty jump seat.

  “Petra and Bruno took her for a walk because she likes to look up, see the planes go by overhead,” Sadie said. “Not to worry, they’ll be back soon. And before you ask about Joey, I’ll tell you that he’s hot foot on his way to Bayonne, to confer with his mouthpiece. He raced out of here about five minutes ago.”

  Okay. Keely knew it was translation time.

  Jack was home and stashed away upstairs, obviously not yet introduced to the social worker because, as far as that lady was to know, they had flown back from Arizona together.

  Petra and Sweetness and Candy were at the airport, most probably because they had checked on her flight and had gone to pick her up.

  Joey was still going to try for custody and had hired a lawyer, which meant that This Was War.

  She had allergies, which explained her red-rimmed eyes, they’d been to Arizona to see Aunt Mary, not shack up in some love nest, and, within minutes, anything that had not yet hit the fan was going to hit it unless Keely played along.

  All things considered, Sadie was actually pretty easy to understand.

  “That... that’s good,” Keely remarked, desperately trying to regain some of her brain, at least the small part that living among the Trehan clan had left her. “And you would be...?” she asked, looking at the lady who was staring at her in the oddest way.

  “Oh, oh yes,” Sadie soldiered on. “I should be introducing you two, shouldn’t I? Silly me. Keely, this is Edith Peters, from the social welfare something-or-other, come to see Candy. Edith, my nephew’s fiancée, Keely McBride.”

  Edith Peters stood up, pulled at the bottom of her suit jacket, then extended a hand to Keely. “I’m sorry to have arrived unannounced, but that is the way we often do things.”

  Keely kept smiling, even as she gritted her teeth. So Sadie’s lies had extended to include an engagement? Probably nobody had told her about the orange jumpsuits that would come with Hers as well as His monograms. “I’m just glad we could all be here to meet with you, Ms. Peters,” she said, wishing the woman would stop looking at her as if she were a bug under a microscope. “But... um... if you’ll just excuse me for a moment? I’ll go see what’s keeping Jack.”

  “Yes, do that, dear, and don’t forget to put on your ring. I found it on the sink after you’d left yesterday and put it in Jack’s room,” Sadie said, going for the world’s record in Whopping Great Fibs. “Not that she sleeps with Jack, you understand,” she added quickly, turning to Ms. Peters. “My good heavens, no. Even if that is a hickey on her neck.”

  Keely’s eyes went so wide she was astonished they didn’t drop right out of their sockets. She looked at Ms. Peters, who was still looking at her, then raised her hand to her throat, realizing that her scarf had slipped, exposing the small red mark on her skin. “Oh, no, no,” she said hastily. “I... um... I scratched at a bug bite, that’s all.”

  “Of course you did, dear,” Sadie told her soothingly. “Now why don’t you go find Jack?”

  “Bug bite? Is that what they call them now?” Edith asked Sadie as Keely all but ran for the back staircase. “I’m only a few years younger than you, Sadie, but in my day, too, they called them hickeys, trophies from make-out sessions in the backseats of Fifty-five Fords. I had a few in my day.”

  Somehow, Keely made it to the top of the stairs, then all but bounced, wall to wall, down the hallway, heading for Jack’s bedroom. Please let him be there... please don’t let him be there...

  “Jack?” she asked even as she opened the door, then stepped inside to see him sitting on the edge of the bed, looking like a man with the world hanging on his shoulders. She wanted to kill him, she wanted to hug him and tell him everything was going to be all right. Then she wanted to kill him again.

  He looked up, glancing first at the clock radio. “Keely? You weren’t supposed to land until nine. What are you doing here?”

  “Never mind that,” she told him, heading for the bureau and the small jeweler’s box she saw sitting there. She had to keep moving, keep talking, and not look at him. Not throw herself into his arms. “Your aunt is downstairs lying her head off and we’ve got to go help her, and the worst is still happening because Joey just bolted for Bayonne and his attorney. There’s nothing else for it, Jack; we have to lie right along with Aunt Sadie. I figure we’ll each only get five years, with time off for good behavior. Where’s the ring?” she asked, turning back to him, holding the open, empty box, aware that her hand was shaking. “Come on, Jack, I need the ring.”

  “Sorry. I have a hangover, and everything you said sort of hit me in a time delay before it sank in.” Jack stood up, fished in both pockets until he came up with the ring. The band was gold and quite wide, the large marquis-cut center stone flanked by three rows of baguettes. They both looked at it for a moment, then he held it out to her.

  “It was my mother’s. Dad bought it for her on their twenty-fifth anniversary, and she didn’t speak to him for a week for being so extravagant. Then she wore it every day, never took it off. Sadie was supposed to save it, give it to the bride of the first twin to marry.”

  Keely took
the ring, slipped it onto her third finger, left hand, trying not to see it, trying not to love the way it looked, the way it felt, the story behind the gift. “I’ll give it back when this is over,” she promised quietly.

  “Yeah, you do that,” Jack said tightly. “Did you have a good flight?”

  Keely nodded, so completely nervous that she found it difficult to believe that just yesterday the two of them had... the two of them had... maybe it was better to just forget that. “You?”

  “I don’t remember. I drank my way through it,” Jack told her, heading for the hallway, both his words and his tone telling her that the reason for their separate flights back from Arizona was a closed book, not to be opened again right now, maybe never. He stopped just outside the doorway, turned to her. “Are you sure you want to go through with this? They could withhold custody until we actually get married, you know, and put us in jail if we don’t.”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  Jack swore under his breath. “Yes, Keely, you have a choice. And I know it’s going to be hard for you to play the loving fiancée, considering that you hate my guts.”

  “I have a hickey on my neck, Jack,” Keely told him, readjusting her scarf, the one from the commercial shoot. “Both Aunt Sadie and Ms. Peters remarked on it, damned near waxed poetic over it. So I don’t think I’ll have to play the loving fiancée all that much, do you?”

  Jack’s cheeks went pale under his tan and he reached toward the scarf. Keely backed away from him. “I... I don’t remember doing that,” he said quietly.

  “I don’t think either of us remembers much of anything,” Keely told him. “It’s probably better that way.”

  He looked at her, nodded. “Probably. May have had something to do with all that sun and heat.”

  “Yes,” Keely agreed, avoiding his eyes. “That was probably it. And proximity. There’s a lot to be said for proximity.”

  “Proximity. Right.”

  Keely wanted to die. She wanted to just lie down, right here in the hallway, and die. “Can we get on with this?” she asked, her eyes beginning to sting again, her voice, quavering slightly.

  Jack stepped closer to her, held her arm as he reached out, pushed down the scarf. “I’d never hurt you, Keely. I... I care for you a lot. This isn’t just about Candy.”

  Keely wiped a tear from her cheek. “Thank you, Jack,” she said. “I care about you, too. But...” Her voice trailed off and she shrugged yet again.

  “Proximity,” Jack repeated yet again. “I know. You and me, you Candy and me, you Candy and Me against the world. It’s difficult to know just what any of us is really feeling, isn’t it? Everything’s happening pretty fast.”

  “Too fast,” Keely said, twisting the ring on her finger. “But we can’t leave Aunt Sadie down there alone with Ms. Peters too much longer. When I came in, she was reading the woman’s palm, and Ms. Peters seemed to be liking it.”

  Jack’s smile was small, rueful. “That’s my aunt. She’s probably telling her that she’s about to be rewarded for doing a good and generous deed. I only hope she stops short of offering her money outright to throw the case. Come on, we’d better get down there.”

  “Funny, I think I just said that. About five times.”

  Keely followed him as he headed for the back staircase, then nearly bumped into him when he abruptly stopped at the head of the stairs. “Thank you,” he said, holding her upper arms as he looked down into her face. “I mean it, Keely. Thank you.”

  Oh, how she loved this man. “You’re welcome,” she said, because she couldn’t say, “Oh, how I love you.”

  “When this is over,” he went on, “you just go to New York and pick any building you want for your shop, and it’s yours. No strings, Keely, it’s yours. I promise.”

  Oh, how she hated this man. “Thanks,” she said, because she couldn’t say, “Oh, how I want to push you down these steps, you blind idiot!”