Catch of the Day (Gideon's Cove #1)(42)
“Well,” I say. “Right back at you.” To hide my discomfort, I glance out the window and freeze. Malone is standing in front of the diner, and with him is a woman. A beautiful woman. A young, gorgeous, wow kind of woman. She’s laughing, and he’s smiling. He’s smiling! A baseball cap shields his face against the rain so his expression isn’t completely clear, but yes, that is a smile, ladies and gentlemen.
Father Tim releases my hand, and I smile automatically at him. When I glance up, Malone’s smile is gone, and he’s looking at me. The lines that slash down his face are emphasized from the lights in the diner. Is he angry? He says something to Miss Universe, and without so much as a wave, they continue on their way, away from Joe’s.
“What the hell is his problem?” I mutter. My face is burning. Suddenly I feel quite grimy in my worn jeans and the sweater with the coffee stain on the left wrist. Who cares? I ask myself, but my heart feels tight.
“Ah, Louise, love,” Father Tim calls, “come and keep a lonely priest company.” Louise, a middle-aged widow, wrestles her umbrella inside the door.
“Back in a flash, Father Tim,” I say as the kitchen bell dings. I get to work, bringing Father Tim and Louise breakfast, chatting up Georgie, exchanging diner slang with Stuart, bussing tables and wiping up spills. But my thoughts stay with Malone. Who was that woman? I’ve never seen her before…and truthfully, I never want to again.
I can’t say I’ve ever seen Malone with a woman, though surely he hasn’t been without female company since his wife left him all those years ago. But still. Smiling with that young, beautiful creature…It stings. It’s been three days since I last saw him. During that time, he hasn’t called me or stopped by once. Not once. So I’m forced to think that yes, indeed, any connection we have is purely physical.
I’ll admit, I’ve been feeling a bit conflicted. It seems wrong, somehow, to have these intense physical reactions to Malone when I don’t even know his first name. My mother’s voice keeps floating through my head—When are you going to find someone decent to marry? Why can’t you settle down with someone like Will?
My protestations to my mother that I’m trying fall on deaf ears. I’m not succeeding, and as she so ruthlessly points out, the years are passing. Of course I’d love to settle down with someone like Will. Someone who found me delightful and couldn’t wait to come home to me, someone who loved children and wanted a couple.
Malone is not that guy. After all, there he is out with Maine’s answer to Catherine Zeta-Jones. If he finds me delightful, it’s only in the sack. The only time we’ve spent when we weren’t all over each other like black flies on tourists was the evening he rescued me from the Skipmonster. There was no joy in Mudville that day, that’s for sure. No happy exchange of information took place there, no laughter, nothing other than some primal attraction. It’s not enough. Especially if he’s primally attracted to more than one woman at a time, damn it.
Father Tim is right—people shouldn’t jump into bed with people they don’t know well. Because this is what happens. You make a fool of yourself with someone who doesn’t even care about you, and then you still have to live in the same town.
It’s not enough, I repeat to myself as I refill coffee mugs and bring out breakfasts. I want more.
CHANTAL CALLS ME a day or so later. We’re both suffering from varying degrees of cabin fever induced by three days of rain. Malone hasn’t called me. Bastard. I remind myself that I don’t want him to call. “Sure, I’d love to go out,” I tell her. We agree to meet at Dewey’s for a few drinks. Knowing my low alcohol tolerance, I opt to walk, even though it’s still raining steadily.
I’ve decided that Malone is an indiscretion created by too many months unrelieved by human contact from a nonfamily member. Aside from Georgie and Colonel, Malone is the only male who’s touched me outside of Dad, Jonah and Will. I probably would have humped the eighty-year-old double amputee if I’d gone much longer.
“Hey, Dewey,” I call as I hang up my slicker.
“Hi, Maggie,” he calls. Without my asking, he pours me a glass of wine and brings it over to the booth where Chantal and I usually sit. “That nice Chantal joining you?” he asks.
“She’s not nice, Dewey,” I say, taking the glass. “She’s a wicked, wicked woman.”
“Don’t I know it,” he sighs. My laugh lands somewhere between irritation and amusement. Does every man in town under the age of one hundred and two have to be so damn smitten with Chantal? Do I have to be everyone’s surrogate daughter?
The red-haired temptress comes in, h*ps swaying, blouse revealing, lest anyone forget just how stacked she is. “Hi, Paul,” she sighs, rubbing past him as if we were trapped on a crowded subway car instead of in a nearly empty bar. “Paul, sweetie, could you bring me a martini, hon? Make it a cosmo, okay? My friend and I haven’t seen each other in ages.”
“You sure have a gift with men,” I observe dryly as Paul hurtles to the bar to do her bidding.
“Oh, it’s nothing,” she says, batting her eyelashes. “Man, this rain! I’m climbing the walls! Tell me what’s new with you.”
I wrack my brain for something I wish to tell her and come up empty. “Not much. What about you?”