Summer's Freedom Read online

  Joel said nothing as Maggie drifted, obviously awash in deep thoughts he had no wish to disturb. Instead, he enjoyed the opportunity to study her. Her skin was tawny, even so early in the year, and in spite of the bruises and stitches surrounding her left eye, he thought she was exotic and wild looking, with almond eyes and unusual slants in her face. Not everyone would think she was beautiful, he felt sure—but he wasn’t everyone.

  Her mouth turned down as she mulled her problem, and with a weary gesture, she reached back to gather her hair into a ponytail, which she held loosely in her hand. The movement showed her graceful neck and the lobe of an ear pierced with an earring that shone golden against her flesh. Joel felt a restlessness stir in his belly, an almost forgotten sensation of desire.

  She looked at him suddenly as if reading his vaguely carnal perusal. “Sorry,” she said, “I went off on a little walk of my own.”

  “That’s all right.” He smiled.

  “How long have you worked with your birds?” Maggie asked, more comfortable shifting the conversation away from herself.

  “A long time—off and on.” He glanced at his hands.

  Maggie sensed again his disillusionment or sorrow, but his tone of voice made it clear this line of conversation was a dead end. She studied him wordlessly. No matter what she’d told her grandmother about men, there was a lot more to Joel than the ability to grace the scenery. In fact, when she listened to him talk, she felt ashamed for assigning him such a trivial function.

  Still, it was hard to ignore his physical presence. From where she sat, the long column of his tanned throat showed at the open neck of his shirt, and she could see the whorl at his crown that governed the way his thick hair grew. Her gaze fell on his lips, full and firm and ripe. She allowed her gaze to linger for the barest instant, then looked away.

  “Listen,” he said, touching her shin with his fingers. “I think I hear the cat.”

  Maggie lifted her head. From the cove of lilac bushes toward the back of the yard came the unmistakable sound of the tom’s call, a meow so worn it sounded like a piano with half the keys missing.

  “That’s my cue,” Joel said, standing. He paused, looking at her. “I enjoy your company, Maggie. I hope we’ll have another chance to talk again soon.”

  “So do I.” She stood almost reluctantly and smiled. “Good night.”

  She carried her bottle inside and threw it away, then combed through the cabinets, trying to find her stash of sour-cream-and-onion potato chips. For a minute, she thought Sam might have found them, and then she remembered where they were—in the closet with the built-in ironing board. She took a soda and the chips with her as she checked the doors and closed any curtains that had been missed.

  Joel, she thought as she automatically performed the duties. What woman couldn’t spin a fantasy about a man like that? Intelligent and warm and strong and handsome—the perfect man for cologne advertising.

  As she headed upstairs, she wondered cynically what the catch was. That age-old fantasy of a strong and gentle man was terrific, but in her experience, real men didn’t come in that combination.

  After her divorce, Maggie had resolved to play it smart with men, and for practical purposes she had divided them into three categories: macho, weak or charming. Her father had been a macho man, insistent upon his own way, and when he hadn’t gotten it, he’d resorted to whatever means necessary to get it.

  The second category, the weak men, was a little rarer. To this group Maggie relegated all the men who were intimidated by her height or her directness, men who found themselves at a loss for words when Maggie threw down the gauntlet of a debate. Nothing, in her opinion, was more aggravating than a man who couldn’t stand on his own two feet in the face of an opponent.

  Between the two categories fell the charming ones—articulate, often handsome men who’d learned how to give a woman the appearance of what she needed without actually giving anything of themselves. Paul had fallen into that category. He was accomplished and good-looking, even warm when he chose to be.

  The problem with her ex-husband had been his need to exercise his charm over any woman he felt to be worthy of the challenge.

  But she’d long since forgiven Paul. At twenty, she’d been unable to see what now was plain: Paul had never overcome his grief over losing his beloved first wife—Samantha’s mother. Instead, he ran into the arms of women who chased away her ghost.

  Joel, now, didn’t seem to fit into any of the categories previously developed. Macho men didn’t try to tame stray cats. Weak men wouldn’t state their opinions as clearly as he had about ecology. Charming men—well, he might fall into that category. She bit her lip in consideration. No, she decided. He seemed too sincere.

  So, since she prided herself on open-mindedness, she created a new category. He’d be the first member of her new file of sincere men. Since he was the first one, she didn’t know what the accompanying flaws were, but one thing was certain: there would be flaws.

  She stopped at Samantha’s door. Seeing the light spilling across the carpet through the crack, she knocked softly. “Can I come in?”

  A muffled “Yes” came through, and Maggie opened the door.

  Sam, dressed in an ancient T-shirt and gray sweats, her hair tumbled around her face, lay across the bed. Her eyes were swollen and red with crying. “Are you all right?” Maggie asked.

  Samantha nodded miserably.

  Maggie sat gingerly on the edge of the bed. “Look, I overreacted in anger. I’m sorry I yelled at you.”

  “I know.” Her voice was small.

  “The truth is, Sam, my feelings are hurt because you’ve just decided I’m not going to understand or approve of whatever it is that you’re hiding, without giving me a chance.”

  Sam picked at the blue flowers on her bedspread and said nothing.

  Maggie sighed. “I’m going to have to trust you to tell me when you think the time is right, I guess. In the meantime, you will be on time when I give you curfew, and I will not tolerate lies about who you’re with. Your restriction stands.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  At the door, Maggie paused, waffling over her next words. She didn’t want to seem as if she were rewarding Samantha’s bad behavior; at the same time, she’d been planning a surprise of epic proportions for more than a month, and it had been scheduled for tomorrow afternoon.

  Treat the behavior, not the person, she decided. “I’ve been planning something for you, and it’s set to happen tomorrow. I’d like to take you to lunch.”

  “I thought you were mad at me.”

  “I was. I’m not now,” Maggie said. “But more than angry, I was worried. You’ve been punished and I hope you won’t disregard my rules again.” She took a breath. “That doesn’t mean I don’t like you and I don’t want to be with you.”

  Samantha sat up, tears trickling down her face. “I don’t know why you keep putting up with me.”

  Maggie laughed softly. “Because I love you, silly girl. That’s a mother’s job.”

  “I’m not much of a daughter sometimes.”

  “Unfortunately, that’s sometimes a daughter’s job.”

  Samantha smiled wanly.

  “It’s time to get some sleep. I’ll see you in the morning,” said Maggie gently.

  Sam stopped her. “I’m sorry, Maggie. I’ll tell you tomorrow, okay?”

  “Fair enough. Good night.”

  “‘Night.”

  In her own bedroom, Maggie turned on a small lamp. This was her sanctuary, the reason she had rented the apartment two years before, and the source of her sanity. The proportions were huge. Three long windows opened onto the garden on one side of the room, and two more showed the gently waving branches of a cottonwood tree. On the opposite wall was a huge closet, and a small glassed-in room holding a desk and her work space jutted out from beyond the bed. In the summertime, she opened all the windows to smell the fragrance of the roses that climbed over the outside of the house.

/>   Over the hardwood floor were scattered imitation Persian and Oriental rugs in shades of pale blue with red. A cherry bed with heavy posts dominated the middle of the room. At the windows hung curtains of delicate bone-colored lace. One overstuffed chair sat by the long windows overlooking the backyard, and a single photograph of Samantha at the age of seven—taken by Maggie on an outing to the zoo—sat on the small cherry table next to the chair.

  On a low table opposite her chair, looking completely out of place, was a primitive VCR and a cabinet of tapes stacked on top of an old floor-model television. She’d claimed both for her personal use when Paul had given them a newer model last Christmas.

  She kept potpourris of woods herbs in brass containers around the room, and tonight the subtle scent relaxed her, as it always did. Going to the VCR, she selected a tape at random, turned the TV on to warm up and turned off her lamp. Then she sank into the overstuffed easy chair in front of the windows, opened her soda and used the remote to start the tape.

  “What’s it going to be tonight, Captain Kirk?” The opening credits to Star Trek flashed—“A Requiem for Methuselah.” One of her favorites.

  The tapes were all Star Trek, a show she’d been too young to enjoy when it had originally run on network television. During the past two years, she’d managed to tape almost every episode—thankfully just as the syndicated stations that had been running it took it off their schedules.

  About halfway through the program, Maggie realized a shadow on the grass outside had been nagging her peripheral vision for quite some time. At the commercial, she left the tape running at normal speed and looked out to investigate.

  The yard was dark except for a long rectangle of light that Maggie assumed fell from the windowed alcove of Joel’s bedroom. It was there that Maggie had seen the shadow from the corner of her eye.

  There on the grass fell the silhouette of a man in few, if any, clothes. She would have known it was Joel anywhere, with those shoulders and the fine sculpted thighs. The rest, as he stretched his arms above his head, froze her in position, and although she hated herself for staring, for invading his privacy like that, she couldn’t look away.

  One shadow arm reached out to the wall, and the square of light abruptly disappeared. Maggie caught herself leaning forward. “Oh, grow up, Maggie,” she said aloud, falling back into her chair.

  As she tried to engross herself once again in the adventures of the U.S.S. Enterprise, her throat was dry. Face it, woman, she told herself. Sour-cream-and-onion potato chips can only take you so far. The same thing applied to work and Star Trek. They simply couldn’t fill the gap she sometimes felt, because what she missed was the pleasure a woman could find only with a man.

  For one excruciating minute, she allowed herself the rare luxury of imagining the two things she most often missed—the taste of a man’s lips and the heady scent of him as he held her.

  It wasn’t memories of Paul she found in her mind, however. Instead, she imagined what the tastes and smells of Joel Summer might be.

  At the end of the moment that she allowed herself, she firmly returned her attention to the television screen and potato chips. But when she realized fifteen minutes later that she’d consumed the entire bag of chips, she knew it was only her conscious mind she’d convinced to occupy itself with something besides the shivery attraction she felt toward the new neighbor. Her subconscious definitely had other plans.

  * * *

  The next morning, in anticipation of her lunch with Samantha and the surprise she had been hoarding for her daughter, Maggie donned a rust-colored skirt and blouse that suited the angularity of her face and body. It was her very favorite ensemble, and as the nubby cloth settled comfortably around her, she wished everything she owned made her feel as good as it did. Even her black eye seemed to look a little better, in spite of the spidery stitches dissecting her eyebrow. When she dabbed makeup over the bruises, she thought she looked almost normal.

  The scent of fresh onions and coffee led her to the kitchen, where she found Samantha, already up and dressed, cooking breakfast. “Morning,” Sam said cheerfully.

  “Good morning,” Maggie replied. “You look almost as good as that food smells.” Although Maggie hated the overly teased and curled hairstyle Samantha insisted upon, the rest was true. Her daughter had remarkably creamy skin and deep emerald eyes. Around her neck was tied a silky maroon scarf. Maggie tugged it teasingly. “I love what you do with scarves.”

  “Thanks.” Sam stirred the potatoes. “You don’t seem very surprised that I cooked your breakfast.”

  Maggie poured a cup of coffee and grinned. “I’m not. You always cook when you want to make amends.”

  “Do I?”

  “And whenever you want a special favor.”

  Sam flashed a coy smile.

  “Not that I mind, you understand,” Maggie continued, stealing a mouthful of hash browns from the pan with a fork. “I will never, as long as I live, learn to like cooking.”

  “And it shows. I feel sorry for your stomach when I go to Dad’s.”

  Maggie laughed, unable to be offended at so obvious a fact. “I manage.”

  Sam rolled her eyes. “I would think even you would get sick of cheeseburgers eventually.”

  “Afraid not—better a cheeseburger made by someone else than a gourmet meal made by me.” She got out the table settings. “And, anyway, I’m supposed to be nagging you about food, not the other way around.”

  “Most people’s mothers don’t eat like you do,” Sam said, carrying the pan to the table to serve the lightly browned potatoes.

  “And not everyone wants to be a model.” The eggs, too, were perfect. Maggie didn’t wait for Samantha to return to the table. She sat down at the steaming plate to satisfy her rumbling stomach.

  Sam had taken typically skimpy portions, and Maggie knew they’d be unsalted. Whatever else happened, Samantha was very focused upon the perfect health she knew she needed to achieve a modeling career. It was the single largest reason Maggie never worried about drugs—Samantha was obsessive about the idea of modeling.

  And she thought Sam had every reason to aspire to such a career. A shaft of gentle morning sunlight fingered one flawless cheek and edged the straight slope of her nose; it threw in shadow a ripe, red mouth and tipped thick lashes. She was also a tall girl, with the beginnings of a shapely figure and an easy grace of movement. Whether she could make it in the cutthroat world of modeling remained to be seen, but there was certainly a good amount of raw material.

  Samantha caught Maggie staring. “What?”

  Maggie dipped her head to take a sip of coffee. “Nothing.” She dabbed her lips with a napkin. “You’re going to love your surprise.”

  Sam jutted out her chin stubbornly. “I’m not going to bite this time. You always tease me forever before you spring it, so I’m going to just wait and see.”

  “Just for that,” Maggie said with a grin, “I’m going to stretch it out double.”

  “Go ahead,” she said airily.

  “I will.” Maggie devoured her eggs, liberally seasoned with Tabasco and salt and pepper. “Sam, you’re a wonderful cook.”

  “Thanks.” The word was perfunctory, and Maggie glanced at her daughter.

  “Okay, are you ready?” Sam said, putting her fork down on her plate.

  Maggie swallowed. She sat up, feeling cold worry race up her spine. What if this revelation was something awful? “Shoot,” she said.

  Sam licked her lips and raised her eyes. “I’m in love.”

  “And?”

  “I don’t think you are going to like him. At all.”

  Maggie nodded. “Why not?”

  “He’s the boy I went to the demonstration with. It was his jacket I was wearing when I first saw you in the crowd.”

  A speed rocker, Maggie thought, stomach sinking. Her imagination conjured up a quick example of the very worst of the breed, a surly, wild-haired youth, with a cigarette in one hand and a bottle of booze in
the other. She fingered the handle of her coffee cup, buying time to hide her instinctual reaction. “Tell me about him.”

  “Well…” Sam glanced up toward the ceiling, a silly smile creeping across her face, a smile she tried to hold in. Maggie quelled an urge to shake her head—Sam was not given to silliness over boys.

  “His name is David,” she said, her eyes going soft. “He’s sixteen and he’s in my English class.”

  Maggie nodded, finally daring to take another bite of her eggs. “Does he drive?”

  “He has his license, but he doesn’t have a car. He’s working,” she hastened to add. “At a restaurant.”

  “When can I meet him?”

  Sam glanced at her plate. “As soon as my restriction is over. I promise.”

  “Great.” She reached over the table to touch Samantha’s hand. “I’ll do my best to be fair.”

  “I know.”

  * * *

  The daughter was going to be a beauty, Joel thought. No doubt about it. She was a little sullen, as girls often are at that age. Suspicious, too, as she caught sight of him working on his ten-speed on the porch. Her mother had run back inside to fetch some forgotten something, and the girl waited at the edge of the porch with her arms crossed, staring at him. Joel looked back at her. “Hi,” he said.

  “You must be the new neighbor,” she replied, her voice thick with the disdain of one well acquainted with new neighbors and other such insects.

  He grinned and turned back to his task. “Guess so,” he agreed, scraping the bike wheel with slow strokes.

  The girl made a small dismissive sound and turned away. At that moment, Maggie slammed the front door shut.

  Joel looked up…and caught his breath. He’d only seen her with night disguising her features, and even then, she’d been attractive. In the full light of day, dressed well and carefully made up, she reminded him of a tiger. Her heavy hair swung around her shoulders in honey fluidness, and her tawny skin was highlighted by the rich rust of her clothing. Her body was long, full at the hip, less so at the breast, a shape women despised, a fact Joel had never understood. Without consciously knowing that he did so, he stood up. “Hi, Maggie,” he said.