His Cinderella Next Door Page 11

  They were allowed to inspect the two identical courses that ran side by side.

  There were smaller obstacles, but Oscar and Molly quickly identified the four tough ones: crossing a very narrow log; a rope swing over water; a huge straight wall; and a crawl under strands of barbed wire. There were all kinds of rules about finishing obstacles together, as a team, that increased the level of the challenge.

  At the very end of the course, with a little more glee than might have been strictly necessary, Tracy showed them the mud pit that the losers would be thrown in.

  “Throwin’ you in the mud,” Fred called joyously to Oscar.

  “Throwin’ you in the mud,” Oscar called back.

  “Do you think we should let them win?” she whispered.

  “They would hate that. Besides, it’s not in your blood.”

  And then the starting whistle blew, and he proved that was true. Oscar was fiercely competitive. Having grown up with a disabled brother, he knew there would be no worse insult than “letting” the other team win.

  She was fiercely competitive, too. Often, that competitiveness had come out between them, and so it was invigorating to switch channels and to work as a team.

  And it was delightfully astonishing how quickly they became one mind, how they played seamlessly together.

  It was glorious to see Oscar in this element, both his enormous physical strength and his brain power being put to good use. After some trial and error, they put the first two obstacles behind them.

  But a new obstacle between them was not being conquered at all, instead it was growing in size and intensity and their inability to navigate it. The obstacle course had obviously been designed for teams of four.

  With just the two of them, they quickly realized getting through most of these challenges as quickly and as efficiently as possible was going to require that they practically be glued together.

  There was laughter. And heated discussion. Evaluation of the other team’s progress.

  And underneath all that, something else brewed and sizzled, growing white-hot. He piggybacked her across the log. They clung together on the rope swing. They fell off on their first attempt, and now, soaked, the physical awareness between them intensified.

  Molly was drunk on the heat of his skin. The beat of his heart. The play of his muscles through the thin fabric of the dress.

  She was drunk on the fact that once he had been besotted with her. And it seemed as if he might still be.

  The electricity between them translated into energy. It looked as if Truck Stop was going to smash the opponents. But then they came to the wall.

  It simply was not a two-person challenge.

  Oscar somehow managed to scale to the top. He hung over it on his belly, reaching out his hands to her, but no matter how hard she ran, and no matter how high she jumped, she couldn’t reach his outstretched hands.

  He turned over and slid back down the wall. He crouched down.

  “Get on my shoulders.”

  She scrambled on. She could feel the simple strength of him as he lifted her up. She stretched as high as she could. No dice.

  “They’re gaining on us,” she cried. As she watched, dismayed, Down Under came to their own wall. They stood around it, chatting, and then quickly formed a human pyramid. And then they were over it and gone, out of sight, their shrieks at victory in sight in the air.

  She stretched higher. She stood on one foot, trying to just get that little bit more height... She wobbled.

  He tried to stabilize her but it was too late. She was falling off his shoulders.

  And then she was in his arms.

  Blinking at him. His strength closed around her. The obstacle course, and the yells of the opposing team, faded.

  It felt as if it were just she and Oscar in all the world.

  “Should we finish what we started all those years ago?” he growled.

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  His lips were dropping over hers.

  He was tasting her. She was tasting him. It was exquisite.

  But just like last time, the timing was terrible. The place was all wrong. There couldn’t be a less romantic setting in all the world.

  And yet there was no denying what was unfolding inside of her.

  She had waited her whole life for this exact moment.

  To finish what she had started. With Oscar. With her Truck.

  She was aware she had wandered aimlessly in the desert since she had left him. Nothing had ever filled the hole that had been left. Not her successes. Not her relationships. Not her moves from one city to another.

  She could see so clearly now that each of those things had just been an attempt to outrun the hole in her heart.

  The hole that only he could fill.

  She sighed into him. She surrendered into this moment, which felt as if she had waited her whole life for.

  Homecoming.

  And then it was over, as quickly as it had begun. Molly found herself unceremoniously set on her feet.

  She opened her eyes and looked at him. He nodded over her shoulder, and she turned around.

  The whole Down Under team was staring at them.

  “Were you kissing?” Kate asked.

  “Um, sort of,” Oscar said.

  Kate cocked her head at him. “How do you sort of kiss?” she asked, guilelessly.

  Molly looked up at him. He was blushing.

  “Uh, Molly was on my shoulders, trying to get over the wall and she fell. I was just, um, making sure she was all right.”

  “Like her lips were all right?” Katie asked dubiously.

  “Like a get-better kiss,” Fred told Kate officiously.

  “Yes!” Oscar said, “Just like that. Have you guys finished the course?”

  “No, we’re waiting for you.”

  “You’re going to win. We can’t get over the wall,” Oscar said. “It’s not a challenge for two people.”

  “It wouldn’t be fair to win like that,” James said. “It would kind of be like cheating, because we have four.”

  Molly looked at Oscar. She could see the emotion in his face.

  Because this was grace. A Ralphie moment if ever there was one: the generosity of it; the pureness of heart; the inability to put competition above decency. Love trumped all.

  “Here,” Fred said. “We’ll help you.”

  And so the pyramid was reformed, and Oscar was put on the top of the wall to help haul people over.

  None of them ran to the next obstacle, barbed wire. They ambled over to it, and helped each other get through it.

  Even with help, Molly’s flimsy dress got ripped to tatters. Everything underneath it did, too, the shorts not quite providing the protection and privacy she had hoped for!

  She thought Oscar might try to remove himself from the intensity of what had just happened between them, but no.

  In a voice only for her, filled with the sensuality of smoke and fog drifting in a forest, he growled, “I see you wore the pink.”

  She knew that stolen kiss was not the end of it. A beginning. It felt as if she were standing at the edge of a cliff.

  With no rope and no parachute.

  “Well,” Tracy said, “I have to say I’ve never seen one unfold quite like that before. Who’s the winner, and who goes in the pit?”

  Fred looked at him with baffled innocence. “We’re all the winners,” he said, as if that was the most obvious thing in the world.

  And then they raced to the edge of the mud pit, and one by one they took each other’s hands, until all six of them stood there.

  “On the count of three,” Oscar said.

  Screaming with laughter, holding tight to each other’s hands, at the count of three they all yelled, “Go for it,” and then they leaped.

 
; Mid-air, Molly realized this simple truth: a hand to hold was the rope, and love was the parachute.

  “Everybody’s coming to my place,” Oscar announced, after they had all hosed off. “Pool and hot tub. What do you guys want for dinner?”

  “Pizza,” they yelled in unison.

  “Are you okay with pizza one more time?” he asked Molly.

  “It’s not a soufflé kind of crowd,” she told him, laughing.

  The Down Under team clambered back in the van, which would follow his car back to the city.

  “I’m going to wreck your car,” Molly said, getting in gingerly. “Truck! You’ll never get it clean.”

  No, he probably wouldn’t. And, given the mud on everyone, his apartment was probably never going to be pristine again, either.

  None of it mattered.

  “You did all of this?” he said, turning on the heater when she shivered. “For me?”

  “For me, too.”

  “So, getting everybody here, booking plane tickets—”

  “Hotels, the van, the venue. There were a few times I just wasn’t sure if I could pull it off, but it turned out pretty good, huh?”

  He contemplated that. Pretty good?

  “Molly,” he said softly, “I have never received a gift like that one. It was exactly right. Perfect from beginning to end.”

  Including, he thought, a bit uneasily, that kiss.

  And her pink underwear.

  And a sense of the future stretching ahead of them, unknown. It was like that broken electrical cord on the ground, again. Sparking.

  Electricity, tamed, could be a good thing. It could provide light and warmth and comfort and convenience.

  He glanced over at her. She had mud on her face. Her hair was plastered to her head. Her clothing was soaked and clinging to her. Her pink bra was peeking through what was left of that dress.

  Awareness of her shivered through him. Right now, she looked more beautiful than she had looked in that yellow dress and the stilettos. In fact, Oscar was not sure he had ever seen a woman as gorgeous as Molly.

  Electricity, untamed, could be a bad thing. A single spark could burn a whole forest down.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  UNTIL MOLLY HAD arrived Oscar had never considered that his apartment was missing something. Cynthia had insisted on hiring a designer and each—expensive—decision had enhanced an already beautiful space. His home was perfectly decorated and functional, not just pillows and poof.

  The kitchen—with its double ovens, built-in coffee maker, wine cooler, stand mixer—would have made a professional chef happy.

  In the living room, a seventy-five-inch television hid behind a piece of canvas wall art that rolled out of sight at the push of a button.

  The pool, and spa, the exquisite outdoor entertaining area furnished with all of his own creations, was outside the door. The views were jaw-dropping.

  The space quietly proclaimed arrival. It had everything a man could ever dream he wanted.

  But right now, Oscar’s apartment had never looked so bad. There were towels on the floor and draped over the leather sectional. Half-eaten slices of pizza seemed to be everywhere. White square boxes, grease-stained, with leftovers in them, were scattered about randomly.

  A soda had overturned, and despite Molly’s and Mrs. Treadwell’s frantic efforts to sponge it up, there was a dark stain on a carpet that Oscar knew to be worth more money than his vehicle.

  So, his apartment had never looked so bad. And it had never felt so good. He had called it home before, but it had not felt that way until now, filled to overflowing with Ralphie’s friends. They were jumping in and out of the pool and hot tub, running around outside, coming into the apartment, dripping water on the floor. Oscar knew, with sudden clarity, exactly what ingredient had been missing from a space filled with spectacular things and stuff.

  Life.

  Molly had been right. Before it had been a movie set. Now, with Molly at its center, it teemed with life and his gaze kept seeking her out.

  She had made a great ceremony of tossing out the dress when they got back to his apartment. Then, she had found the ugliest bathing suit in his guest collection—leaving the nicest one for Katie—and led the charge to the pool. Now she was in her pajamas, two cameras around her neck, her feet bare, working unusual angles to get those great shots she was famous for. If that meant standing on the granite kitchen island, or crawling under the coffee table, or straddling the back of the sofa, that’s what she did.

  Finally, things seemed to be winding down. Bathing suits were fluttering from the balcony railing—strictly against condo rules—and Fred and James and Molly were sprawled out on the carpet on the floor. Kate and Mrs. Treadwell were on the sofa. Oscar was in his easy chair. Even Georgie, who made a point of hating people, could not stay away from the love in the room. He had crept in and found a place on James’s lap.

  Oscar did not know how much he had waited for this moment, until it happened.

  “Remember how he loved Uranus?” Fred asked quietly.

  The Uranus stories started. They all had one. They could all remember a time Ralphie had cornered some unsuspecting stranger and begun an earnest discussion of his favorite planet.

  Of course, his love for all things Uranus had only deepened when he discovered people thought he was saying your anus.

  By the time each of them had shared a story, they were all howling with laughter. The floodgates had opened and they told stories about Ralphie deep into the night. Some of them made them laugh and some of them made them cry.

  Mrs. Treadwell fell asleep on the couch. So did Katie. Molly brought out blankets and pillows. At one in the morning, Mrs. Treadwell woke up and declared the party over. Between the obstacle course, the pool party and stuffing themselves with pizza and soda, everyone was so exhausted they didn’t even protest the party’s end. The van was called to bring them back to their hotel.

  At the door, there were tears and hugs and kisses and promises.

  And then the door whispered shut, and something else happened that Oscar was not aware he had waited for, until it happened.

  He and Molly were alone.

  Molly went back into the living room and looked in one of the pizza boxes. She picked up a very dead looking piece of pizza, plumped up one of the pillows, sank down on the sofa, pulled a blanket over herself and took a bite.

  “That’s going to—”

  “Anchovy,” she declared with a blissful sigh before he could finish his sentence. She was pretty sure, Oscar being Oscar, he planned to warn her the pizza was going to be cold, not to mention have a potential food poisoning hazard.

  It was nice to have someone care about such things. “Should we watch a movie?”

  “Aren’t you exhausted?” Oscar asked her.

  “Sorry, no. It’s almost lunchtime in Frankfurt. Are you exhausted?”

  “Yeah. No movies for me tonight.”

  “Go to bed, then.”

  So silly to be so happy that he didn’t go to bed. Instead, he came over to the couch and said, “Scoot over. I’m too happy to go to sleep.”

  She pulled back the blanket, inviting him in, and he climbed in behind her. She leaned on him, munching her pizza. Maybe it was the pleasant exhaustion that enveloped him, but he touched her hair.

  She didn’t protest. In fact, she leaned deep into his fingers, like a cat who wanted to be stroked.

  “Best day ever?” she asked him.

  “Without a doubt.”

  “What happened between you and Cynthia?”

  “Why end the best day ever with that?” he asked back.

  “It just seems like the time of night and the kind of day that encourages confidences,” she informed him.

  “That’s true. The long day has lulled me into a state of languor that makes m
e want to tell you my whole life story, except you already know that.”

  “So, fill me in on the bits I’ve missed out on.” She nestled deeper into the solidness of him behind her.

  “Something was missing with Cynthia and me. I’m not even sure I knew what it was until tonight when I saw my apartment filled with laughter. And light. And love. Everything with Cynthia looked so good, but...” His voice trailed away.

  “Just like your house that you grew up in. I see that in a different light since you mentioned when your mom’s control issues started.”

  “I don’t know that they started with Ralphie. But I think that made them worse.”

  “Everything was just so perfect. Like a stage set. Coming from my place—Dad’s motorcycle parts on the kitchen counter—I loved it. And maybe even envied it, a bit. And was afraid of it, too. It had an unspoken look-but-don’t-touch vibe. Looking back, it lacked...er...soul. Except for you. And Ralphie.”

  “I think I knew it couldn’t work with Cynthia even before Ralphie died. We were planning the wedding—she was planning the wedding, I should say—and I was going along, because she was doing a fantastic job and didn’t really need much input from me.”

  “But?”

  “I had one request, which I considered nonnegotiable. I told her Ralphie was going to be my best man.”

  Molly twisted to look at him. “She said no?” she whispered.

  “She didn’t say no. It was just the look on her face. Something in me quit right then, though it wasn’t until after he died that I realized how badly it had unsettled me, how much of a wedge it had put in the relationship. That look haunted me. I guess, I had always thought he would come live with us, one day. After Mom and Dad couldn’t look after him anymore. But that look...”

  “How could he not have been your best man?” Molly asked, chagrined.

  “Well, no doubt he would have blurted out Uranus at exactly the wrong moment.”

  “But that would have been the best part,” Molly said.

  “Yeah,” he agreed softly, “I think it would have been.”

  “How come he died? I’ve been scared to ask this—”

  “Don’t ever be scared to ask me anything.”