Gotcha! Page 5

  “Very much so. But sometimes I don’t have the time. To be more accurate, I don’t take the time, and I know breakfast is the most important meal of the day. If you’re going to be cooking for me—and you haven’t said you are—but if you are, we need to discuss payment. I don’t have a clue what to pay you or what homemade meals cost on the open market, so whatever you decide is okay with me.”

  Julie pondered the question as she turned the pancakes. “Well, I can’t charge you full price, whatever that would be, because I’m asking your opinions of the dinners. Breakfasts are a no-brainer. I’m going to be cooking the dinners anyway, but then there is the shopping and prep time involved. How does three dollars for breakfast sound and ten dollars for dinner and you clean up? That would be ninty-one dollars a week. Do you know how to load a dishwasher or work the garbage disposal?” Mace shook his head. “Well, I’ll show you. So, do we have a deal?”

  “Absolutely,” Mace said as he pulled money out of his wallet to pay a month in advance. “I think you’re cheating yourself, Julie. Are you sure this is enough?” Mace said, pointing to the money he put on the table.

  “It’s fair.” Julie stacked the pancakes and the golden fluffy eggs onto a plate, the bacon on a separate dish, and set it in front of Mace. She proceeded to scramble more eggs, then crumpled tiny bits of bacon in them. She added dog food and set three plates down on the floor.

  “My dogs eat what I eat. They even like vegetables and some fruits. My last two dogs lived to be twenty and twenty-one, so I know what I’m doing. There are people out there who wouldn’t agree with my dogs’ diets, but I really don’t care. Oh, I’m taking Gracie and Cooper this week to the vet to have their teeth cleaned, and I can take Lola, too, if you want.”

  “Of course. These pancakes are delicious. What kind of syrup is this?”

  “My own blend, banana and mango syrup with melted butter. I won a blue ribbon for it at a bake-off.”

  Julie sat down at the table with her cup of coffee. If her breakfast companion had seen the late-night news, it obviously wasn’t bothering him. He smiled and asked if she shopped off television.

  “I hate waking up to hearing the news; it’s never anything good. I don’t watch it before I go to bed, either,” she fibbed, her fingers crossed in her lap. “I am not a television watcher; I prefer to read. When I do watch television, it’s more for sound than anything else. Either the Discovery Channel or the Home Shopping Network and, yes, at times I do shop online because I hate going to the malls and standing in line. Been there, done that, when my kids were little. How about you? By the way, how did Lola do last night in her new home?”

  “I read the Times online. Lola did very well. She slept on the bed with me. I hope that was okay.”

  “Of course it’s okay. She obviously feels the need to be close to you. Dogs have feelings, you know. Cooper, as I mentioned, suffers from separation anxiety. He’s getting better about it. You might want to think about getting another dog when you go back home; otherwise, Lola is going to be very lonely. Oh, look! Gracie just showed her the doggie door.” Cooper threw back his head and howled, an ungodly sound. Mace bolted off his seat, a wild look of panic on his face. Julie laughed. “He’s mad because Gracie went first, then Lola. It’s that male thing. You see how bothered the two females are.”

  Mace sat back down, a sheepish look on his face. “Obviously, I have a lot to learn when it comes to animals. I’ll take all instructions and criticism to heart.”

  Julie laughed again. “More coffee?” Mace shook his head. “I’ll give you some to go in a hot pot. If you’re done, then, let me show you how to work the dishwasher and how to clean up the kitchen. I have to go out now and run some errands. Is there anything I can get for you while I’m out?”

  “No, not really. I’m going to . . . ah . . . work myself. Do you want me to keep Gracie and Cooper with me?”

  “That would be nice. That way I can sneak out, and Cooper won’t go ballistic. The A/C in my truck has to be fixed, and I don’t like leaving them while I’m gone. Like I said, Coop chews anything in sight, so watch him. They’ll know when I get back. Well, come on, Oliver, here is your first lesson in running a kitchen. Remember now, these plates are throwaways.”

  Ten minutes later, Julie’s kitchen seminar was over. With an airy wave of her hand, she was gone, shoulder bag in place and a string shopping bag in one hand.

  Mace Carlisle looked around the blue-and-white kitchen in a daze. He fixed his gaze on the dishwasher, which was as alien to him as a spaceship. It took him a good fifteen minutes to position everything to his satisfaction. He dropped in some orange squares, which said on the box that the dishes and pots would come out shiny bright if this product was used. Julie hadn’t said anything about cleaning off the counters and the mess of drippings on the griddle. He wasn’t sure, but he thought that part went along with the job. He went to work, but not before he turned up the volume on the television, where they were selling Birkenstock sandals for $59.95 a pair. He wasn’t sure, but he thought that might be a tremendous bargain compared to buying them in New York.

  Mace fell to his task, soaped up a sponge, and went to work. When he was done, the kitchen glistened. He was congratulating himself on a job well done when all three dogs bellied through the doggie door. Cooper again howled his displeasure when he realized Julie was nowhere to be seen. Gracie swatted him with her paw, and he quieted down. Lola watched these antics and let loose with a bark of her own as she nudged Mace’s leg.

  “Okay, let’s go!” Mace felt like the Pied Piper as he led the three dogs out the door and down the steps and the mini platforms and across the yard to the cottage. Inside, he handed out chew bones he’d found on the counter. Now he had peace and quiet. Not that he didn’t like the commotion—he did—but he needed to concentrate on the phone call he was going to make to Oliver.

  He talked for over an hour on his untraceable phone. The first ten minutes of the phone call were devoted to the news and his current problems, the other fifty minutes were spent talking about Julie Wyatt and the dogs and his new rental, where he was wearing someone else’s clothes and loving it. He went into great detail, even laughing at how he’d cleaned the kitchen and loaded the dishwasher. Mace listened to his friend, then said, “I want you to do something for me, and this is important, Oliver. I don’t want any screwups, and I don’t want it coming back on me in any way. Just take care of it for me, and I’d like the offer to go out today. Pull every string you have to get it done. By the way, I have to tell you, this lady can cook!” He listened to his attorney for another five minutes, then powered down.

  Satisfied that there was nothing else for him to do, Mace picked up his laptop and a book he’d found on the bookshelf and started to read last evening. A page-turner; not that he was any authority on political thrillers, but he did like the intricate plotting on the one hand and the author’s direct style on the other. He knew that if he stayed long enough, he would read more books by this author, of which there were a number on the shelf. He carried the book along with the hot pot of coffee out to the deck in the backyard, where he settled himself in a bright yellow Adirondack chair. He went back into the cottage to bring out a bowl of water, which he set down on the deck. The dogs started to romp and tussle with each other until Cooper spotted a squirrel, and off they went.

  Mace read for well over two hours, eventually dozing in the shade a large oak created over the small deck. The dogs, exhausted, curled up at his feet.

  While the life he’d left behind in New York was in turmoil, he consoled himself with the fact that he wasn’t spinning in that turmoil. He was hundreds of miles away, enjoying his temporary new life, which he was loving more and more by the minute. And he had a dog that loved him and two other dogs that thought he was okay. He wondered how much better life could be, considering his present circumstances.

  The throwaway phone tinkled, the sound low enough that it didn’t disturb the dogs. It had to be Oliver, since no one
else had this particular number. He powered up and listened. “You did what? For God’s sake, why? I can’t believe you googled Julie Wyatt. No, Oliver, I don’t want to know her business. Her business is not my business. I’m her tenant. End of story. That lady could have booted my ass out of here, but she didn’t. Do not even think about telling me whatever it is you found out. No! What do you mean maybe I can help her? She doesn’t look to me like she needs my help or anyone else’s help. Julie Wyatt has it going on, I can tell you that. She has a family, children who live nearby. No, I don’t want to know her life story. All right, all right, tell me.”

  Mace listened and didn’t say a word. When Oliver finally wound down, all Mace said was, “Thanks for telling me.”

  Chapter 5

  Mace Carlisle bolted upright from the chair on the deck when he heard an earsplitting bark. He looked around in a daze until he remembered where he was. The three dogs clustered around his ankles as if to say, hey, it’s raining, and we’re afraid of thunder and lightning, so let’s go. In a matter of seconds, they were all drenched.

  Go they did, with Mace leading the way. Once inside, the dogs shook off the rain as Mace beelined for the stairs to change out of his wet clothes. When he came back downstairs, he had to turn on all the lights before he wiped the dogs down with the fluffy yellow towels stacked up on the washer. He eyed the wet towels and knew he had to wash them, but the washer was as much an alien entity to him as had been the dishwasher in the main house. He stared at the machine as if it were his worst enemy and suddenly felt incredibly stupid. His face grim, he opened the cabinets and there they were, instructions encased in a plastic bag. Ten minutes later, the machine was humming right along with Mace. Cooper pawed the tile floor, then barked his approval that Mace had mastered this little domestic chore. Mace bowed low to acknowledge the dog’s approval. Gracie pranced off, Lola in her wake, as if to say, a woman wouldn’t have had to read the instructions.

  Outside, it had become totally dark as thunder roared overhead, and lightning danced across the darkened sky. Mace had a bad moment when he thought of all the ancient oak trees on the property. He hadn’t seen any lightning rods anywhere, not that he had looked for them. Maybe people didn’t use lightning rods anymore. He was so far behind the times, he couldn’t believe it.

  The power flickered, then went out. “Crap!” he muttered. The dogs, who were clustered in a tight knot on the deep, nubby sofa, started to howl. Mace made his way in the dark to the couch and sat down. A second later, all three dogs were draped over and around him. He spread his arms as wide as he could and whispered to them. In a million years, he never would have believed dogs could be frightened of thunder and lightning. He was certainly getting an education on the fly here.

  As he was crooning to the dogs, he thought of Julie and wondered if she had gotten home before the storm. Insulated in New York in a high-rise all these years, he hadn’t experienced this kind of storm since he was a child and, even then, all he could recall were rainy days and the need to wear galoshes and carry an umbrella. He was sure that Julie, living here in the South, was used to storms like this one and had sought cover wherever she was.

  The dogs had quieted down as he stroked first one, then another. His thoughts were suddenly all over the place. He thought about how lucky he was to have run into Julie Wyatt when he did. Someone must be watching over him. He thought he was even luckier that Julie Wyatt was not into watching the twenty-four-hour news channels. His conscience pricked at him for the way he was lying to her after she’d gone out of her way to be so nice to him. Julie with the haunted eyes. While she smiled and even laughed out loud, the smiles and the laughter didn’t reach her eyes. And now he knew why.

  Mace squeezed his eyes shut and wished with all his heart that Oliver hadn’t shared what he’d learned on the Internet in regard to Julie Wyatt. Mace was out of his depth when it came to Julie Wyatt. He wished there was something he could do for her. He made a strange sound in his throat that the dogs didn’t like. They stirred and pawed at his legs until he calmed them down. He marveled at how astute animals were. Later, he would talk to Oliver about Julie Wyatt. Now, he needed to think about his own life, where it was going, if he would survive his immediate crisis, and the time he had left to either go forward, backward, or languish in some damned high-rise in New York. All alone.

  As hard as he tried, Mace couldn’t concentrate on his own problems. Problems that, except for one, were being taken care of by Oliver. In the end, he knew it would all be all right because Oliver would make it all right. His thoughts drifted to Julie again and the information Oliver said he’d downloaded and sent to him on his laptop. He wondered if he would have the willpower to ignore the e-mail that was waiting for him. Probably not, because, in the end, Mace Carlisle cared about people, and his greatest joy in life was helping the people he cared about the most. Right now, he had moved Julie Wyatt to the top of his list.

  Forty-five minutes later, the rain stopped, the sun peeked out from the clouds to the west, and things began to dry. Fifteen minutes after that, the power flickered a few times and finally came back on. “And we have light, boy and girls!” Mace said dramatically. Cooper hopped off his lap and ran to the door, Gracie behind him. Lola waited until Gracie turned and offered up a sharp bark that meant Lola should get it in gear. She leaped to the floor and ran to the door. All three dogs waited for Mace to follow. He opened the door in time to see Julie park her truck. He hadn’t heard a sound, and yet the dogs knew. He marveled again at how intuitive the animals were.

  Julie waved as she made her way to the back steps that would take her up to the kitchen. “How did you like that storm?” she called out.

  “It was awesome,” Mace called out in return before he shut the door.

  Totally alone, Mace didn’t know what to do. He turned on the TV to Fox Cable News to see what they were saying about him. He got an earful. He turned it off and opened his laptop. He downloaded the material Oliver had sent to him. That’s when he heard a pinging sound that he couldn’t identify. He walked around listening until he realized it was the washer telling him the towels were done. Now he had to figure out how to work the damned dryer. Once again, he searched the cabinets and found the instructions in a plastic bag. What happened to OFF and ON switches? Why did appliances need all these bells and whistles? Were housewives rocket scientists these days? He finally came to the conclusion that all the bells and whistles were just something to drive up the prices of the machines.

  Mace dumped the wet towels into the dryer and pressed six different buttons that the instructions told him would make the towels soft and fluffy. He didn’t like soft and fluffy towels. He liked a coarse towel, one that would absorb the water. The instructions told him to set the timer to forty-five minutes. He did. The machine came to life with a little three-second tune he could have done without. He was back at the table and his laptop a few minutes later.

  Mace tapped the touch pad and read steadily for over two hours. He was oblivious to the television playing, the sunshine that lit up the room like a stadium at night, and his own problems as he read just about everything there was to know about Julie Janson Wyatt. His eyes were burning when he closed his laptop. He meandered into the kitchen in time to hear the three musical notes signaling that the drying process was complete. Apparently, the machine had been trying to alert him that his laundry was dry for some time, but he’d been so engrossed in what he was reading that he’d tuned out the sound.

  He folded the towels, then popped a Diet Dr Pepper and returned to the living room, where he clicked on Fox Cable News again. Since it was the middle of the news hour, the commentator was rehashing everything he’d said hours before. Mace stared off across the room to the huge fieldstone fireplace and wondered what it would be like to live in this little cottage in the winter. Would Lola lie by the hearth, or would she be near him on the deep, comfortable sofa, contentedly chewing on a rawhide bone?

  Mace continued to look around at h
is cozy digs and wondered if it was Julie Wyatt who had decorated the place. The job was perfect, neither feminine nor masculine. Just a homey, comfortable, woody kind of place. He loved the fact that the cottage didn’t have ceilings per se, just wood and beams and heavy black hardware. The circular oak staircase that led to the loft was a work of art. The windows were multipaned and glistened in the sunlight; just enough light for the hanging ferns and philodendrons suspending from the beams. They were so lush, he knew someone with a green thumb tended them. Julie? Maybe one of her children? She said she had a gardener. Maybe that was who watered them.

  He looked down at the braided rugs, which were every color of the rainbow. His mother had hooked rugs like these in the wintertime back when he was a small boy. Who had hooked these? Julie? Maybe she’d done it during that tragic time in her life. Maybe it was cathartic for her to use her hands. The oak floor was beautiful—almost a shame to cover it up—but the rugs did make a difference, made the room come together somehow. And they seemed to warm up the room. The word cozy came to mind.

  There were pictures on the walls, something he hadn’t noticed before. Pictures of dogs. And the curio cabinet was full of dog figurines. Dogs in costumes. Sad-looking puppies. Happy-looking puppies. And dogs with no expressions. Over the fireplace was a huge framed collage of different scenes. Childhood drawings. Julie’s children’s endeavors? Obviously, and they were important enough to warrant the one-of-a-kind frame that surrounded them.

  Mace got off the couch and walked around. His first stop was the bathroom, where he turned on the light. Spotless was the word that came to mind. No clutter, but tastefully decorated with seashells, obviously collected by Julie or her children. The linen closet was full, anything and everything a guest would need. Once again, there was a hooked rug by the shower and one by the sink, with bath mats to cover them when stepping out of the shower.