The Debutante's Second Chance

“You look wonderful,” said Jessie, her voice soft.

Landy looked into the mirror again, almost afraid there would be no reflection there because the Landy Wisdom who wore clothes like this no longer existed.

“It’s really me,” she said, swallowing sudden, ridiculous tears.

By the time she reached the bottom of the stairs, she knew the heels were a mistake. She already had one off when the doorbell rang, and she limped to answer, standing with her stockinged foot tucked behind her other leg.

“Hi,” she said.

“Wow,” he said.

She tugged her shoe back on. If she regretted it, so be it. “We should go,” she said. “I’ll turn back into a frump when the eleven o’clock news comes on.”

“Never in a million years.” He looked up at where Jessie stood on the stairs. “She have a curfew, Jess?”

She grinned at him. “Before daylight or else park in the garage. We don’t want the neighbors talking.”

“Eli would be parked on the porch waiting.” Landy lifted a black cashmere stole from the newel post. “He runs the neighborhood watch,” she explained to Micah.

“Is that all it is?”

“What else?” she asked, puzzled, but he was opening the door for her. “Later, Jess.”

“I thought we’d go to the Overlook. It’s warm enough to eat on the porch. That okay with you?” Micah seated her in the passenger side of his Blazer—giving her a boost when her skirt was too narrow for her to negotiate the step up—and pulled the seat belt up for her to fasten.

“It’s my favorite place,” she said, when he’d climbed in beside her. “I like your Blazer.”

“My dad wanted me to bring his nice, conservative Buick. He said it was a much better choice for taking a lady out to dinner.”

She adopted a haughty air. “That’s all right. We debutantes are quite tolerant.”

They were seated at a table beside the windows that looked out over the Ohio when Micah said, “I was crazy about you, you know.”

Her eyes widened. “You didn’t even like me.”

“It made me mad that you couldn’t see what a jerk Trent was, and I knew I’d never have enough money or prestige to ask you out, regardless of him.”

“Oh, my goodness, no. You weren’t even good enough to kiss my ring in those days.” Anger and disappointment made her voice wobble, which made her even angrier. “Take a look at me, all right?” She gestured toward her body with open palms. “I have wrinkles and scars and a gimpy leg. Most of my grandmother’s money paid for a lawsuit after I killed my husband. Here’s your debutante, Micah.”

Fury gave flash to her quiet prettiness, and Micah enjoyed her anger even as he did a little internal squirming because he was almost certain it was justified.

“You’re right,” he said. He picked up the wine bottle that sat between them and poured more into both their glasses. “I’m sorry. Coming back to Taft seems to have brought out the angry young pain in the ass in me.”

She laughed, as he’d hoped she would. “I’m sorry for blowing up, too,” she said. “Shall we start over?” She extended her hand. “I’m Landy Wisdom.”

He took her hand and raised it to his lips. “Micah Walker,” he said. “Very happy to make your acquaintance. Lovely weather we’re having, isn’t it?”

She beamed at him, her eyes tilting, and he felt his heart do a flip-flop.

Over the main course, he asked, “Do you think Nancy Burnside has designs on my father?”

Landy dropped her fork. “Designs? Mrs. Burnside? I’m not sure, but I think that borders on blasphemy. She’s a geometry teacher. Isn’t that like a nun?”

“She was a geometry teacher,” he corrected. “She drank beer at my housewarming party. That’s not nunlike.”

“She was just being polite,” she scoffed. “Good grief, she’s been widowed forever.”

He took a sip of wine, looking at her over the glass. “I think it would be great, starting over in your sixties.”

“It doesn’t bother you, thinking of your father being with someone besides your mother?”

“No. At least not as much as the idea of him being alone the rest of his life bothers me.”

“Jessie and Eli and you and I are all alone,” she said. “Not everyone’s meant to walk two by two.”

“No, but my father is. There are holes in his life that definitely can’t be filled by a thirty-eight-year-old single son who makes bad coffee.”

There were holes in her life, too. Great empty gaps where self-confidence and two good legs used to be. Not to mention waking in the middle of the night with longing singing through her veins and making her heart pound painfully hard. Though she hadn’t always enjoyed sex with Blake, she missed the kissing, cuddling and full body contact that came before it, the illusion of closeness that came after.

She looked across the table at Micah and acknowledged the attraction she’d felt since first seeing him again in the church basement. She was honest enough to admit that the attraction went back as far as Taft High School, when she’d smiled at Micah even knowing Blake would be angry.

She would like, she knew, to kiss and cuddle with Micah, to sleep in his arms and wake beside him. She’d like to cook his breakfast wearing nothing but his shirt, the way they always did in movies. It would do an admirable job of filling some of the holes of being alone.

But, between the cuddling and breakfast came the act itself, the physical invasion that meant she was being overpowered. Micah would expect that, but she would never be overpowered again.

After dinner, they sauntered through the gardens of the Overlook. Landy’s leg was killing her, and her limp became more pronounced despite her best efforts.

“You’re hurting, aren’t you?” he said suddenly, and seated her on a path-side bench before she knew what was happening. He knelt before her, lifting her foot to his thigh and slipping off her shoe. “Why didn’t you say something? Here.” He handed the shoe to her and straightened, lifting her into his arms and moving toward the parking lot.

“I’m fine,” she insisted, holding herself away from him, hoping to stave off the warmth that emanated from his body along with the fresh scent of soap. “It just does that sometimes.”

“Ms. Wisdom.” He stopped walking and scowled down into her face. Reflections from the muted lights that lined the path danced in his eyes. “I am trying my best to use the manners my mama taught me. The least you can do is go along with it and maybe, just maybe, I won’t drop you.”

“Oh.” She relaxed in spite of herself, allowing the warmth to flow over and through her. “Your mama would be proud,” she said, as they approached the Blazer.

“I hope so.” He opened the car door, propped his foot on the inside running board so that her backside rested on his thigh, lowered his head and kissed her.

Oh, yes, was all she had time to think before her senses took over. This wasn’t passion as she knew it. There was no demand in the heat of his lips. His eyes had been clear and bright before they closed, not fogged by alcohol or some other mind-altering drug. Although his arms tightened as the kiss deepened, no hand pushed against her breast or thrust beneath the skirt of her dress. When his tongue sought entry into her mouth, she denied it, but he didn’t end the kiss in fury or disgust. He raised his head, smiled at her and lowered it again.

This time, when his tongue slid across the seam of her lips, she opened them. The age-old dance was slow and warm and tasted sweetly of wine and coffee and something else. She felt a sensation between her thighs that she hadn’t felt in—oh, so very long. Her breasts were sensitized, the soft cloth that covered them feeling scratchy even though it wasn’t.

“That wasn’t part of what my mama taught me,” he said when the kiss ended.

Chapter Four

Window Over the Sink, Taft Tribune: Trust is something you lose when you grow up, eroded by the hurts and betrayals that are part of everyone’s life from the time you find out your folks lied about Santa Claus. But every spring, when the green has made us forget the browns of winter and kites make colorful stars in the daytime sky, we learn once again to trust. We know Taft will clamor with the sounds of lawnmowers on Saturday afternoons, another class will be preparing to graduate from Taft High and everyone will be sweeping their porches just to have an excuse to be outside.

I said once that there is a price to be paid for spring, and there is, but that regaining of trust—even if it’s temporary—is worth the cost.

“Neighborhood watch, huh?” Micah lifted a hand to return Eli’s wave as his neighbor jogged toward Landy’s house. “Seems to me he only watches one house.”

The thought that he was sitting on his porch spying on people and talking to himself entered his mind, and he returned his attention to the golf clubs he was re-gripping.

He was wrapping tape around the shaft of the seven iron when a voice said, “You could at least offer me a beer,” and he raised his eyes to see Eli standing on the brick path that led to the River Walk.

“I could,” Micah agreed, and looked down at the roll of tape in his hand. “Or you could go in and get the beer and we could both have one.”

“Once a sixth man, always a sixth man,” Eli complained, walking past him and into the house.

Micah grinned at nothing, thinking Eli hadn’t stayed long at Landy’s house. Not that it was any of his business. It wasn’t. Really.

“Lindsey tells me you and Landy had a date.”

“Why am I not surprised?” Micah took the bottle Eli offered. “Did she also tell you I sang Beatles songs in church and little Colby Whatshisname peed all over me?”

“Oh, yes.” Eli sat down. “Lindsey’s very thorough. Her older siblings have threatened to clamp her lips together with Super Glue.”

“Did you stop by to tell me you don’t want me to see Landy anymore?” Micah asked bluntly.

Eli’s eyebrows shot up so high they disappeared under the dark blond hair that fell over his forehead. “Huh?” He set his beer on the porch floor with a little bang. “Why in the pocket of Joseph’s coat would I do that?”

Micah glared at him. “Well, because—why in the what?”

Eli looked abashed and ridiculously young. “For a minister,” he said, “I have an alarming tendency toward swearing. In order to keep their father employed and out of their hair, my two oldest children gave me a list of curse alternatives. Some of them stuck.” He picked up his beer. “But don’t change the subject. Why did you think I would mind you seeing Landy?”

“Well.” It was Micah’s turn to be embarrassed, and he was. “You go over there a lot, all times of the day and night. You walk in without knocking. You’re both single adults. I just thought….” He let his voice trail off.

Eli shook his head sadly. “A big-city reporter, award-winning, no less, and you jump to conclusions like you were still a running back on a high school football team. Lord, Lord,” he said prayerfully, looking up, “what is to become of this lamb of Yours? This black sheep, I mean. I understand that the Beatles songs in Your house were okay—You have John Lennon and George Harrison with You, after all—but couldn’t You just give him a little guidance down the path of common sense?” He waited, head cocked as though listening, then gave Micah a doleful look. “He says He did, but you went the wrong way. Again.”

“Elijah St. John, you are an unmitigated asshole.” But Micah was laughing.

“I try,” said Eli modestly.

“If you aren’t seeing Landy, why do you go over there all the time?” Micah demanded. So much for minding his own business, but there were limits, after all.

The smile stayed on Eli’s face, but dimmed in the green eyes. “We’re friends,” he said. “She’s gone through a rotten few years. A rotten many years, really.”

“I know.” When Eli didn’t continue, Micah was silent. He had been a reporter long enough to understand about confidentiality even when it was unspoken. He had, in the past, pushed people to the very limits of their discretion. Somewhere along the line, he’d lost his taste for that—at least in his personal life.

It was time to change the subject. But not necessarily to mind his own business.

“What about you?” he asked quietly. “Did you have some bad years, too? You’re a divorced minister with six kids. I doubt that was an easy thing to become.”

Sadness slid over Eli’s features like a mask. The expression was so out of place on the usually smiling face that Micah felt as if the sun had suddenly disappeared behind a cloud. He got to his feet. “Be right back,” he said, and went into the house.

When he came back out, carrying a bag of potato chips, Eli’s face was clear again, though there was a pensive look in his eyes.

“Remember,” he said, “how you used to call Landy the town debutante?”

Micah nodded, flinching. “I’ve also made that mistake in the past couple of weeks.”

“Well, I went to Princeton, remember, and I met a real one.” Eli shook his head. “White dress, curtseying, the whole bit. Dee was my roommate’s sister and I met her when I went home with him on some weekends. It was like being in a different world, you know, where people actually do dress for dinner, and she was the very best part of it.

“She really liked the idea of cultivating the country boy and we got married the week after I graduated. It wasn’t until we were on our honeymoon that she found out she couldn’t talk me out of being a minister. Still, it was okay as long as we lived in the Hamptons and had a big, social church. She was a good minister’s wife, generous with her time and money both. We had the first two kids—Max and Josh—and entered them in nursery school before they were even born. It was okay,” he repeated, looking down at the beer in his hand.

“What made it not okay anymore?”

“She got pregnant again, wanted an abortion, I said no. She agreed to have the child, finally—that’s Wendy—and loved her after she was born, but it changed something between us. I didn’t feel the same about Dee and she stayed angry. Then her brother—my old roommate—and his wife were killed in an accident. Dee was distraught, of course—her whole family was—but no one wanted their kids. We’d agreed to be their guardians without ever once thinking what that entailed. Dee wanted to allow some rich, childless couple to adopt them, but I couldn’t do that. Hence, I got Ben, Little Eli and Lindsey, but lost my marriage in the process.”

He looked up, smiling again. “I moved them all here to rebuild, and it’s worked out well.”

Micah sipped his beer silently, then set it down and concentrated on wrapping tape around the shaft of his six iron. He was angry with Eli’s ex-wife, and he wanted to tell his friend she was no great loss; he could do better.

“What’s Jessie’s story?” he asked instead.

Eli’s shrug was elaborately casual. “She’s a nurse who was married to a doctor who died of a heart attack.”

Something in his eyes alerted Micah that once again, Eli was fudging. “She’s a nice woman.”

Eli got up, brushing potato chip crumbs from his shirt. “She’s okay. I need to go. I’m umpiring at Wendy’s softball game. Now there’s a job that ought to get me a father-of-the-year award.”

“More likely to get you lynched,” said Micah, laughing and completely failing to notice his friend’s sudden speculative expression.

Which is how he found himself in a half-squat behind home plate yelling “Stee-rike one!” while demure young ladies in baseball caps and ponytails kicked dust at him.

She’d been so involved with the shape of his mouth and how well it fit over hers that Landy hadn’t taken the shape of Micah’s backside into account. When he assumed the position of home plate umpire at the game in which Jessie’s and Eli’s daughters were playing, she had a chance to correct the omission.

The view was admirable.

“Breathe. You’re turning blue,” Jessie mumbled. She sighed. “He does look fine, doesn’t he?”

“Yes, he does.” Landy looked sideways at her friend, seeing the wistful expression on her face. “You know, Jess,” she said carefully, “I don’t have any claims on him. We just went out once, is all.”

Jessie gave her a blank look. “What in the name of Noah’s ark are you talking about?”

“Nothing.” Landy grinned at her, unable to quash the ripple of gladness Jessie’s reply created. “You’ve been around Eli too long. You’re starting to talk like him. Is there anything you’d like me to know?”

“Oh, please.” The look this time was wilting. “I loved, married and lost one workaholic. I don’t think I care to go through it again. Eli and I are just friends, thank you very much, and we will remain that. Except for when we’re being enemies, that is.”

The subject of their conversation came up the bleachers and sat between them, casting a longing gaze at Landy’s popcorn that made her lift her shoulders in resignation and hand him the bag. “Garbage gut.”

“You need to talk to Micah,” he said, taking Jessie’s soft drink and lifting it to his lips. “He’s suspicious of me coming to your house, and I can’t lie to him.”

“He’s a reporter,” said Landy. “We can’t tell him. How can you suggest such a thing?”

“He’s my friend,” he reminded her, his gaze level on hers. “I trust him, and it’s time you trusted somebody.”

“I’ve been there and done that,” she said, her voice feeling jagged in her throat. “I do trust him, to a certain extent, but not about Safe Harbor Railroad. It’s too important to too many people.”

“I’m not forgetting,” he said, “but maybe it’s time you did. Some things, at least.” Eli stopped, his eyes narrowing as he watched the field. “He just called Wendy out. Doesn’t friendship mean anything in this world?”

Jessie looked toward the sky, a cloudless blue expanse. “It’ll be a terrible waste of good weather if no one cooks out tonight.”

“I will,” said Landy immediately. “I’m probably the only one whose grill is clean anyway.” She prepared to leave. “Will you invite Micah for me? And his father and Nancy, too, if they’d like to come.”

She was standing beside the grill in her backyard when Micah came down the River Walk. She wore a towel on her head and a robe and had a cordless phone tucked between her shoulder and her ear as she poked at the grill.

When he came close, she looked up and flashed him a smile, but something like guilt crossed her eyes. Something furtive that made him feel like a snoop and an interloper. He frowned, not liking the sensation, and walked past her to put the beer and soft drinks he carried into the cooler that sat on the end of the picnic table.

A moment later, she said, “Hey, Micah,” and he turned. She was putting the phone in the pocket of her robe. “How are you at starting fires?” she asked.

They were at least five feet apart, but the tension arced between them so obviously that he almost expected to see sparks. This hadn’t been the kind of fire she meant, but it was there nonetheless.

“Well,” he said, “I never was a Boy Scout.”

She looked so wonderful standing there. No makeup covered the dark shadows under her eyes or filled in the little brackets that pain had dug around her mouth, but her smile lit her face. It made her look younger, as did the anxiety behind it.

He wanted to kiss her again, and the drooping shawl collar of her robe showed the shadowed beginnings of her breasts, making him want to do more than kiss her. He even took a step in her direction, then stopped, suddenly realizing that her tension wasn’t the same as his.

Anxiety. He’d already thought the word, but its meaning hadn’t come through then. It did now. Her tension was sexual, as his was, but it didn’t feel good, as his did. His was anticipatory; hers was filled with dread.

Oh, God. Oh, dear sweet God. She was afraid of him.

He cleared his throat. “Your hair looks fetching that way, and I like your outfit,” he said, his voice sounding gravelly, “but if you want to finish getting ready, I’ll see what I can do with the fire.”

“Thank you,” she said, and turned and fled.

“I acted like a freaking idiot,” she told Jessie, tossing salad with a violence that had iceberg lettuce littering the counter, the floor and Jessie’s arm when she stood too close.

Jessie didn’t crack a smile. “That’s no act. Stand up straight.”

“I can’t.”

Worry crossed her friend’s features, and Landy was sorry she’d answered so abruptly. “It just hurts some today, is all,” she assured her.

“Right.” Jessie reached into the cupboard over her head and found the kitchen bottle of pain relievers. “Are you taking these a lot?” she asked, running a glass of water and handing it to Landy.

“More than I’d like,” Landy admitted, “but not a dangerous amount.” She swallowed the pills. “What am I going to do, Jess? He’s so attractive, and I get goose bumps just being in the same room with him, but if he touches me—I mean really touches me, I’m going to freeze up. I know it.” She tossed salad with frustrated abandon. “Why does the actual act mean so much to men?”

“Not just to men.” Jessie washed vegetables, her expression pensive. “The ‘act,’ as you call it, is wonderful. I’m so sorry you never had the opportunity to know how wonderful. And,” she added, shaking a carrot at Landy so that droplets of water sprayed them both, “you never will if you don’t work on this fear.”

“Work on it,” Landy repeated. “As in what? Writing a report? Driving everyone nuts by talking ad nauseum about my hang-ups? Asking Micah to be an experiment?”

Jessie glared at her. “Maybe,” she said. Still scowling, she demanded, “Where’s the damn vegetable tray?”

“I have it,” said a meek voice from behind them, and they both swung on Eli.

“How long have you been listening?” Landy asked.

He adopted an injured air. “Not long enough, evidently. I didn’t hear one thing that was interesting. Holy sh—shmoly, Landy, what have you been doing with that salad? It’s all the way from one end of the kitchen to the other.”

“Take it,” she ordered, plunking the salad bowl into Eli’s still-open hands and giving the sectioned vegetable platter to Jessie. “We’ll be right out.”

He moved toward the door, but stopped before he got there. “You might try it,” he said quietly, “the experiment thing, I mean. Not all men are pigs. Not all reporters are untrustworthy.”

Micah was standing at the edge of her brick sidewalk with Lindsey in his arms when Landy went outside. “Your walk’s coming apart,” he said.

“I know. It’s on this spring’s to-do list.” She stroked Lindsey’s strawberry blond hair back from her face. “Hungry, Linds?”

“Oh, you’ve met my new girlfriend?” Micah looked at her past the child’s face, his eyes warm. “Be careful. She’s the jealous type.”

“He’s silly, Aunt Landy,” Lindsey announced, planting a noisy, wet kiss on his cheek and pushing herself out of his arms. “Let me go, Uncle Mike. The hot dogs are done.”

Landy watched the little girl run to join her siblings and Jessie’s children around a platter mounded with hot dogs. “Uncle Mike, huh? You’ve made a conquest.”

“Oh,” he said, “I’m a whiz with the five-year-old set. And Wendy and Jessie’s girl Hannah assured me I didn’t do too bad as an umpire.” His hand lifted, pushing her hair back from her face in much the same way as she had Lindsey’s, although his touch was much more tentative. “How am I doing with the thirty-somethings?”

His hand lingered at her hairline, then slipped down to cup her cheek. She looked up at him, and it seemed that she could become lost in the foggy depths of his gray eyes. And she wanted to. She wanted to be lost in that way that happened to other women but eluded her.

When she spoke, her voice was thready. “Not bad,” she said. “Not bad at all.”

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