Jennifer Crusie - Maybe This Time

“I was right there,” North said, his patience obvious.

“No you weren’t, you were down in that damn office behind that damn desk.”

“What did that desk ever do to you? Except support you well during sex.”

“It wasn’t the desk,” Andie said. “It was what it stood for.”

“Fine furniture?”

“The Family,” Andie said dramatically and drained her glass. “Of which I was not part.”

“Of course you were.” His annoyance was plain now.

“No. You and Southie and Lydia were family, the family law firm. I was the woman you slept with up in the attic.” Andie took the bottle and topped up her glass. “It was very Rochester of you.”

“Who?”

“Jane Eyre. He kept his insane wife in the attic.”

“Well, the insane part was right.” North finished his drink.

“You know that fight you were talking about?” Andie said, glaring at him. “It’s coming right up.”

“Good. We can start by you telling me why the hell you left.”

Andie let her head fall back on Alice’s bed. “A million times I’ve said this. You left me. You stopped paying attention, hell, you stopped seeing me. You’d sit behind that desk eighteen hours a day and then climb into bed at one A.M. and tap me on the shoulder for sex. That got old fast.”

“I thought you liked sex.”

“I did. I didn’t like being treated as your live-in hooker.”

“Drama queen.”

“Fine.” Andie set her glass down so she could shift around and look him in the eye. “Tell me something we did after your uncle died that didn’t involve the family business or sex.”

North didn’t say anything.

“I rest my case. You had two speeds at the end, ‘I’m working’ and ‘I want sex.’ Neither of them had anything to do with me.”

“The sex definitely-”

“No it didn’t,” Andie said. “I could have been anybody.”

“You were never anybody,” North said with conviction. “That’s why you stopped having sex with me? You thought I didn’t know you were there? Because that is insane.”

Andie took a deep breath. “After your uncle died, if I wanted to see you, I had to go to your office. You were always busy, but if it was six o’clock, I’d shove the papers off the desk and say, ‘Remember me?’, and most of the time we’d end up having sex on your desk.”

“I remember that,” North said over his drink.

“It was the only way I could get you to look at me,” Andie said. “You were always looking down at the desk, so I’d just slide right in there so you’d see me.”

“It was great. Why’d you stop doing that?”

“Because one night I came down and shoved the papers off your desk and you said, ‘Damn it, Andie, I’m busy, I’ll be up later,’ and picked up the papers without even looking at me, and I thought, Don’t hurry, and went back upstairs and that was the last time I volunteered for anything. It was humiliating enough to have to go down and remind my husband I existed, and then to get rejected…” She looked at his face, at the frown there, and said, “What?”

“I remember that.”

“Well, I remember it, too, you jerk. I should have sued that fucking desk for alienation of affection.”

“No, I remember what I was doing.”

“What?”

He shook his head. “We had troubles.”

“Which you never told me about.”

“Family business,” he said, and began to take a drink and then stopped as he realized what he’d said.

“And I wasn’t part of the family,” Andie said.

“Damn it,” North said to himself.

“It’s okay.” Andie leaned back against the bed. “It’s over.”

“We were in big trouble,” North said.

“It’s okay, you don’t-”

“Uncle Merrill took over the firm when my dad died, and he ran it for eighteen years.”

“Oh,” Andie said. “And he wasn’t competent?”

“He was very competent,” North said. “He was just crooked as all hell. Three generations of Archers established the good name of the firm and Merrill risked it all. Never got caught, either.” He drank again.

“So you had to cover up for him?”

“The statute of limitations on a lot of that stuff had run out, but the big problem was that if any of it got out, the reputation of the firm was gone. My mother was grieving, Southie was too young…”

“So you had to do it all,” Andie said. “North, even when Merrill was running the place, you did it all.”

“I wasn’t covering up felonies then,” North said, and his voice was bitter. “I’d just found out his latest screwup and it was about to break, and it was well within the statute of limitations, and I was scrambling to find a way out, and you showed up-”

“You know, if you’d told me,” Andie said.

“I didn’t tell anybody except Southie. And I only told him when he asked.”

“You should have told Lydia. She had to have known what he was like.”

“She wouldn’t have listened, and I didn’t want to be the one to disillusion her.”

“He was her brother-in-law,” Andie said. “Why would she care?”

“He was her lover,” North said, “and she’d care a lot.”

“What?” Andie sat up straighter. “Lydia and Merrill?”

“I thought you knew.”

“How? By telepathy?”

“From Flo.” North looked genuinely surprised. “Flo never told you?”

“Flo’s not one for gossip. She’s a live-and-let-live kind of woman. Why would she have told me?”

“That’s what started their feud.” North took another drink. “Christ, you did miss a lot.”

“Well, I was stuck up in that damn attic waiting for you,” Andie said. “What do you mean, that’s what started their feud? Flo didn’t like Lydia because she was so snotty to me.”

“That didn’t help, but there was a catfight one day. Flo was coming down the stairs from visiting you, and I invited her to a cocktail party we were having, and Mother said, ‘Yes, Flo, and bring whoever you’re with that night, too.’ ”

“Bitch,” Andie said.

“Well, Flo was pretty open-minded about who she slept with,” North said.

“She still is,” Andie said. “Doesn’t mean Lydia gets to take shots.”

“Then Flo said, ‘Well, you can be sure it won’t be my brother-in-law.’ After that it was pretty much open warfare.”

“Go, Flo,” Andie said. “Although Merrill wasn’t Lydia’s brother-in-law anymore, your dad was dead.”

North took another drink, discreetly silent.

“Oh. How far back did this affair go?”

“I think it started a year after I was born. Lydia had come through with the Archer heir, and my dad wasn’t the faithful type.”

Andie tried to process this new side of Lydia. “Yeah, but with his brother?”

“Merrill was the exciting one. Black sheep of the family,” North said grimly.

“So they were lovers for almost thirty years.” Andie thought about it, Lydia sneaking into bedrooms, or across the backyard since Merrill had the house next door. Lydia, in the middle of the night, tiptoeing through the begonias. “Wow.”

“Yep,” North said.

Andie squinted at him. “What else? When you get this terse, there’s something else.”

He hesitated.

“I know, I know, I’m not family.”

“Ever notice how Southie and I don’t look much alike?”

“Well, yeah, but… wait a minute. You’re kidding me.”

North shook his head.

“Have you told Southie?”

“Southie told me. Uncle Merrill told him when he turned twenty-one.”

“Wow.” Andie sat back. “And you never told me any of this.”

“Family secrets,” North said. “You were right, I shut you out. I’m sorry. I was wrong.”

Andie blinked at him. “You have changed.”

“Yeah.” North smiled at her. “Enough about the past, it’s gone. Are we drinking to your engagement?”

“No, that’s over.” Andie sat back against the bed again. “Wow. Lydia had a son with a lover. Who was her brother-in-law. Amazing.”

“Back up,” North said, suddenly alert. “What do you mean, it’s over?”

“I broke it off with Will two days ago. So does Lydia know that Southie knows?”

“I don’t know. Are you sure you made it clear to him that it was over? Because he seems pretty sure it’s not.”

“He’s not paying attention, then. It’s a serious failing with the men in my life. What do you mean, you don’t know if Lydia knows? Don’t you people ever talk?”

“And say what? ‘Mom, do you know that Southie knows that he’s not Dad’s kid?’ Would you want that conversation with Lydia?”

“Oh. No.”

“So to return to Will-”

“I don’t want to return to Will. Will is history.”

“Glad to hear it,” North said.

“Why?”

“Because I’m not history,” North said, and kissed her.

It was so swift that Andie didn’t have time to close her eyes first. North was just sitting there, very close, and then he was kissing her, and it hit her the way it always had, the heat slamming into her as her mind shorted out, and when he whispered, “Give me another shot, Andie,” she almost said, God, yes, and stopped herself just in time.

“Nothing’s changed,” she said, but she felt the heat of his body through that crisp, white shirt, his breath on her cheek, his hand on her waist-

“Everything’s changed,” he said and kissed her again.

She kissed him back because it felt so good, and more than that, it felt right, but her libido had gotten her into this mess before, so she put a lid on it when he moved his hand to her breast.

“Hold it,” she said against his mouth.

“My bedroom’s next door,” he whispered against hers.

“You should go there.” She pulled away from him, from all that warmth and satisfaction. “I’m drunk, and I didn’t get any sleep last night, and I’m stressed out of my mind because this place has ghosts, which you don’t believe in, and I can’t do this.”

He was still for a moment, and then he kissed her cheek and said, “You’re right, this is lousy timing. I apologize.”

“You don’t need to,” Andie said. “I like the kissing. I like having you close like this. I just need sleep.”

“Fair enough.” North stood up and then held out his hand for her. “Big day tomorrow. I’ve got a private investigator coming down to go through the house to see what’s going on here. We’ll fix whatever it is and then take the kids back to Columbus with us.”

Andie took his hand and let him pull her to her feet, and the alcohol and exhaustion hit her at the same time. “Do you even have a place for the kids to stay in Columbus?”

“We’ve got two of the bedrooms on the second floor ready for them. Mother’s moving in next door with Southie-”

“Oh, poor Southie,” Andie said, and then realized for the first time why Merrill had left Southie his house next door.

“It’s his turn,” North said, without sympathy.

“So it’s going to be you and the kids in the main house? You’re going to feed Alice breakfast?”

“The bedroom Mother’s vacating is also on the second floor. It’s yours if you want it.”

“Me take over Lydia’s bedroom? Living with ghosts would make me less nervous.”

“She likes you.”

“She called me an idiot.”

“That was ten years ago.”

“That was ten minutes ago.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

North capped the bottle of Scotch and put it in his bag, and Andie thought about that bedroom on the second floor. North was thinking she wouldn’t be in that bedroom for long. And he was right.

“I can’t move in,” she told him. “You know what would happen and we’d end up in the same damn mess. I don’t care how much you’ve changed, you’re never going to stop working long enough to have a real relationship-”

“Oh, come on,” North said. “That was ten years ago.”

“-and I need somebody who believes in me-”

“I believe in you.”

“-not somebody who thinks I’m crazy because I want my husband with me or because I see ghosts.”

“I believed in you enough to hire you for these kids.”

“You did that to slow down my marriage to Will,” Andie said. Which was probably a good thing. “It was like the alimony checks. I’d get one every month and think, ‘There you are again,’ and remember the good times, and then I’d remember the bad times, and then I’d have a drink. Moving in with you would be the alimony checks in 3-D.”

“That makes no sense,” North said.

“Well, I’m a little drunk. The smart thing to do is to stay friends. That way we don’t bring our horrible screwed-up relationship into these kids’ lives, we keep things calm and safe for them. Which means our only relationship is a business one.”

“That,” North said, “is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“See?” Andie said. “No respect.”

“I give up.” He leaned over and picked up his overnight bag and kissed her on the cheek as he straightened. “You have a good night. We’ll fight this out in the morning.”

“Nothing to fight about,” Andie said, turning toward the other twin bed.