His grip tightened and his eyes bored into hers. “Last night you didn’t think I was slimy. I may be a son of a bitch, but not for what we did together. Last night you were hot, I was hard, and we took care of it. It may not have been the wisest choice either of us has ever made, but it happened. Now, deal with it like an adult, for Christ’s sake.”
Georgeanne yanked her arm from his grasp and stepped back. She wished she were big and strong and could hit him really hard. She wished she were quick with cutting words and could slice his heart. But she was neither physically strong or quick under pressure. “You made sure I was real happy last night, didn’t you?”
He blinked. “ ‘Happy’ is as good a word as any, I guess. Although I’d use ‘sated,’ but if you want to use ‘happy,’ that’s fine by me. You were happy. I was happy. We were both pretty goddamn happy.”
She pointed the headless Skipper at him. “You sneaky bastard. You used me.”
“Yeah, when was that? When your tongue was down my throat or when your hand was down my pants? The way I see it, there was some pretty mutual using going on.”
Georgeanne glared at him through her red haze. They weren’t talking about the same thing, yet it was all tied together. “You lied to me.”
“About what?”
Instead of giving him the opportunity to lie again, Georgeanne marched into the kitchen and rewound his answering machine. Then she hit the play button and watched John’s face as his attorney’s voice filled the silent room. His features gave nothing away.
“You’re making too big a deal out of this,” he said as soon as the tape clicked off. “It’s not what you think.”
“Is that your lawyer?”
“Yes.”
“Then any further contact between us will take place through attorneys.” She was deadly calm when she said, “Stay away from Lexie.”
“Not a chance.” He towered over her. A big, powerful man used to getting his way by the sheer force of his will.
Georgeanne wasn’t intimidated. “You have no place in our lives.”
“I’m Lexie’s father, not some made-up asshole named Tony. You’ve lied to her about me all of her life. Now it’s time she knew the truth. Whatever problems we have between us doesn’t change the fact that Lexie is my little girl.”
“She doesn’t need you.”
“Like hell.”
“I won’t let you near her.”
“You can’t stop me.”
She knew that he was probably right. But she also knew that she would do anything and everything to make sure she didn’t lose her daughter. “Stay away,” she warned one last time, then turned to leave. Her steps faltered.
Lexie stood in the doorway to the kitchen. She was still dressed in her pajamas and her hair still stuck up around her head. Her gaze was locked on John as if she’d never seen him before. Georgeanne didn’t know how long Lexie had been there, but she feared what she might have heard. She grabbed Lexie’s hand and dragged her from the house.
“Don’t do this, Georgeanne,” John called after her. “We can work this out.” But she didn’t turn back. She’d given him far too much already. She’d given him her heart, her soul, and her trust. She wouldn’t give him the most important thing in her life. She could live without her heart, but she couldn’t live without Lexie.
Mae picked up the newspaper on Georgeanne’s porch, then walked into the house. Lexie sat on the couch with a raspberry-and-cream-cheese muffin in her hand while the television blared the theme song to The Brady Bunch. Raspberry-and-cream-cheese muffins were Lexie’s favorite and an obvious attempt to soothe the ouchie with sugar. But after what Georgeanne had told her when she’d phoned the night
before, Mae wasn’t sure a gooey muffin would make everything all better.
“Where’s your mom?” Mae asked as she tossed the newspaper on a chair.
“Outside,” Lexie answered without taking her eyes from the screen.
Mae decided to leave Lexie alone for now and stepped into the kitchen to make herself a cup of espresso. Then she headed out back and found Georgeanne standing beside the brick porch pruning her Albertine roses and tossing the dead flowers into a wheelbarrow. For the last three years, Mae had watched Georgeanne diligently coax the tangerine roses up the pergola framing her back door. A profusion of pink foxglove and lavender delphinium crowded flower beds at Georgeanne’s feet and crammed the garden along the fence. Morning dew clung to the delicate petals and wet the bottom half of Georgeanne’s robe. Beneath the orange silk, she wore a wrinkled T-shirt and a pair of white cotton panties. Her hair hung from a ratted ponytail and the mauve fingernail polish on her right hand was badly chipped as if Georgeanne had picked at it. The situation with Lexie was worse than Mae had thought.
“Did you sleep at all last night?” Mae asked from her position on the last step.
Georgeanne shook her head and reached for another wilted rose. “Lexie won’t talk to me. She wouldn’t talk to me yesterday on the drive home, and she won’t talk to me today. She didn’t drift off to sleep until around two a.m.” She tossed another rose into the wheelbarrow. “What’s she doing in there?”
“Watching The Brady Bunch,” Mae answered as she moved across the brick patio. She set her coffee on a wrought-iron table and sat in a matching chair. “When you called last night, you didn’t tell me she was so upset that she couldn’t sleep. That’s not like her at all.”