Midnight Oil Read online

  Chapter 11

  “STAY HERE,” Troy ordered Peggy. He erupted out of the car and shot over the sidewalk, up the steps and into the house he’d parked in front of. It was a neat little bungalow on a postage-stamp lawn, painted a soft blue with white trim. A familiar Nissan Pathfinder sat in the driveway, the car that Samantha used to pick up the twins from powder-puff practice. Blocking it in was a shiny black Dodge Ram truck with inordinately big tires; Peg surmised that it belonged to Sam’s husband.

  Peggy got out of the car despite Troy’s instructions and stood in front of the place, her heart feeling as if it were hurling itself against the wall of her chest. Were Danni and Laura okay? Was their brother okay? Was Sam okay? How violent had this altercation gotten while she and Troy were driving over?

  A lower left panel of the door was splintered, leaving a gaping hole, but there was no damage around the lock or the jamb.

  It looked to Peggy as if Sam had let her husband—ex-husband?—inside, maybe to get him calmed down, or maybe so that the neighbors wouldn’t call the police.

  From inside the house she heard shouting. She moved to a window and tried to peer in through the half-closed blinds, making out Troy’s big body near an overturned armchair. He had another shaggy-haired man in a lock, his forearm across the guy’s throat. “Get the hell out of here and don’t come back, or I will pulverize you and then snap your neck like a chicken bone.”

  “Troy, don’t hurt him!” Samantha, blond hair wild and cheeks tearstained, cowered in a far corner of the room, wearing nothing but boxer shorts and a T-shirt.

  The smaller man called her something vile and told Troy to do something anatomically impossible. Peggy winced and hoped the kids weren’t hearing this, but she knew they must be. Where were they? Hiding under their beds, poor things?

  “You can’t keep me off my own property, you son of a bitch!” The shaggy man snarled, trying to twist free. “And you can’t stop me from seeing my kids.”

  Troy’s answer was to haul the man by the neck to the door. “You can see your kids during reasonable hours, when you’re sober. In the meantime, you piece of shit, get away from them and get away from my sister.”

  The guy scrabbled ineffectively against Troy’s grip, kicked backward and even tried to turn and bite him. “I’ll file assault charges, damn you!”

  “You do what you have to do. The cops can come out here and take a look at the door you were kicking in. They can ask Sam and your kids a few questions. And they can inspect you for nonexistent bruises. Believe me, I’d like to take your ass apart, but it’s not going to do my sister any good to have me in jail.”

  Troy wrestled him off the porch and into the yard. Then he released his neck and gave him a kick in the pants that sent him sprawling. “Walk back to whatever roach motel you crawled out of.”

  “Give me my keys, you prick!”

  “Oh, sure. Frankly, I’d love to see you wrap your car around a telephone pole, but in the state you’re in, you’d take some innocent person with you. You’re not getting behind the wheel, you’re walking. And you start now.” Troy took a menacing step toward him, and the guy stumbled to his feet. Still cursing, he lurched down the street.

  Peggy expelled a breath she hadn’t been aware she was holding. “Your sister has got to file a restraining order first thing in the morning.”

  “Yeah. You okay?”

  She nodded. “I don’t know if she is, though.” She gestured toward the house. “And there’s no way the children could have slept through this.”

  Samantha was huddled in a corner, crying. Troy ran to her, knelt and put his hands on her shoulders. “Sam, it’s okay. Sam, where are the kids?”

  She raised a red, blotchy face. “Bathroom. I told them to lock themselves in the bathroom.” She wiped her nose on the back of her hand and let Troy help her up. “Coach—Peggy—what are you doing here?”

  Sam headed for the hallway and the bathroom, her children her first priority, but embarrassment crept into her demeanor.

  “Peggy and I were, uh, having coffee when you called.”

  Sam nodded, then knocked on the bathroom door. “Derek? Danni? Laura? It’s okay now. He’s gone. Uncle Troy is here.”

  It was Danni who opened it, her face pale. They’d all been crying. Sam and Troy hugged and kissed each one of them, and Peggy tried to swallow the lump in her throat.

  Later, she made them hot chocolate in the kitchen while Troy persuaded Sam to give a statement to the police.

  “It’s really hard when parents don’t get along and they split up,” Peggy told the kids. “Mine did the same thing.”

  “Did your dad go away for almost a year and then show up yelling and kick in your door?” Laura asked.

  Peggy put her arm around Laura and pulled her close. “No. My dad just got married to somebody else. But it sucked, because he also got a whole new family, and we were afraid he liked that one better.”

  “Did he?” It was Derek who asked this question.

  I have to be careful how I answer this. “Um, no. Not better. But my dad was a very athletic guy, kind of like your uncle Troy. And this new family of his had a boy who was also very athletic. My brother, Hal, was a competitive swimmer, but my dad liked football. So he went to Alan’s games a lot.”

  “Alan was the new boy?” Danni asked.

  “Yes.”

  “What about your games? Did he go to those?”

  Peggy ruffled Derek’s hair. “Not so much. I was a girl, and he didn’t think my games were that important.”

  “That’s really unfair. He hurt your feelings.”

  Peggy nodded. “He did. But I don’t think he meant to. Just like I don’t think your dad meant to scare you tonight. He just drank too much whiskey or something and felt guilty for going away. So, not thinking straight, he decided he wanted to see you at one o’clock in the morning. And of course that’s way past your bedtime.”

  “I hate him,” said Derek, pushing his hot chocolate away. “He said really bad things to my mom when she wouldn’t open the door.”

  “Sometimes people say things they don’t mean.” Peggy prayed she was handling this right.

  “I think he meant them. Even without whiskey he used to be a jerk.” Derek’s eyes were hard and angry. “I was glad when he went off.”

  Laura and Danni didn’t say anything. But the guilt on their faces spoke for them. Peggy wished she could say something, anything, to comfort these children. “It’s okay to be mad at your dad,” she began. “It doesn’t mean that you don’t still love him.”

  “I don’t want to love him,” Danni blurted.

  Peggy stroked her hair. “Yeah, but you probably do.”

  “He doesn’t deserve it.”

  Peggy sighed and stroked the girl’s cheek. “Well, that’s the funny thing about love. You can’t help how you feel about people, whether they deserve it or not.”

  TROY EVENTUALLY CALLED a cab for Peggy, since he didn’t feel he could leave Sam and the kids alone. Mr. Creep might return. “I’m sorry the evening ended like this,” he said. “And I’m sorry I can’t take you back to your car personally. You make the driver wait until you’re inside with the doors locked, okay?”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “I mean it.”

  “Thanks for dinner, even if I embarrassed you by falling off the bench.”

  He gave her a tired grin. “Hey, I could care less. It’s not me who showed my blue panties to Benito.”

  She winced.

  “I had a great time earlier tonight. I want to see you again…. There’s something we should talk about, though.” He passed a hand over his eyes, rubbing at them with the heel of it.

  “Troy. You deal with your family situation and don’t worry about anything else for the time being. You know where to find me once things are more settled. After Hours isn’t going anywhere.”

  He didn’t say anything for a long moment. “Yeah.”

  The cab pulled up and Troy
handed her into the backseat, passing some cash to the driver once she was settled. “Troy, I can pay my own cab fare….”

  He ignored her, gave the cabbie the address and then dropped a quick kiss on her mouth. “See you soon, Peggy-Sue. Don’t run off and get married.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Fat chance of that. I’ve seen all I want of domestic bliss tonight.”

  PEGGY DIDN’T EVEN TRY to go into her bedroom when she got home, since she knew she couldn’t sleep. Her apartment seemed particularly sterile, after the ugly but somewhat endearing geezer furnishings of Troy’s place. Peggy sat cross-legged on the pristine taupe carpet and stared at Marly’s painting on her wall. The girl on the faux television screen stared back at her, midkick. Her red hair flew in the breeze, her jersey slid askew against her body and her athletic pants were dirtied with smudges. The ultimate tomboy, she didn’t look like the kind of girl who’d ever work in a salon and day spa.

  Peg twisted her mouth wryly, dug her bare toes into the carpet and started going through the mail she’d grabbed on her way in.

  She discarded a flyer encouraging her to buy a house from a man with a smarmy smile, a notification for the previous resident that her cat was due for shots and a department store catalogue filled with all sorts of things she didn’t need and couldn’t afford.

  She did open a couple of bills and a letter from the school where she coached. She scanned it, her disbelief turning to anger.

  Dear Ms. Underwood,

  We regret to inform you that the school’s athletic field will be undergoing improvements in the next few months, since we can expect relatively dry weather at this time of the year and must finish the process before the rainy season.

  The school board has made the decision to move all of Woodward’s athletic activities—practice and games—to the fields at the Coral Gables Youth Center. Since there are hundreds of teams utilizing these facilities, we have been given specific time slots in which to hold our activities, and there are not enough to go around.

  For this reason, we must regretfully inform you that the girls’ football program has been eliminated for the season. We realize that this may cause disappointment to both you and the young ladies affected by the decision. We look forward to the program resuming at some point next year, when the work on the athletic fields has been completed….

  “What?” Peggy shouted aloud to the absent principal. “I don’t see anything about the boys’ program being eliminated!” It was the perfect ending to an already miserable evening: her pet project, meant to empower girls and teach them that there were no limits to what they could do, was being flushed.

  Chapter 12

  TROY MADE SURE that Samantha’s attorney filed a restraining order in the morning. He tried to get her to take the day off, but she insisted on going to work while he dropped the kids off at school.

  Then he coolly took Mr. Creep’s Dodge Ram to Home Depot and purchased another door, since the Lotus wasn’t much use for hauling supplies. He figured the jerk was still sleeping off his hangover somewhere, and would never know. When he got back, he left a window down and the keys in the ignition. It wasn’t his problem if the truck got stolen, and he didn’t want his brother-in-law breaking into the house to find them.

  He had popped the original door off its hinges and was hauling it around the side of the house when a bright blue Mini Cooper zoomed up, red hair flying out the driver’s-side window. Peggy popped out of the munchkin-mobile like a cork from a champagne bottle—but her mood was anything but celebratory.

  “Bastards!” she spat. “Chauvinist pigs from hell! Stupid assholes!” She waved a crumpled piece of paper at him, and then her eyes fell on the new door.

  “Did Derek and the twins get any sleep? Sam? They doing better? The jerk didn’t try to come back, did he?”

  Troy absorbed the change of focus and emotion with calm amusement. “Derek slept. So did Sam. Danni and Laura not so well. But I’ll make them take naps this afternoon and go to bed early. No, the jerk did not come back. Did you sleep? Judging from the purple bags under your eyes and the yawn that’s pulling your mouth over your head at this moment, I’d say no. Now, what has you in such a lather?”

  “I didn’t sleep because I got this!” She waved the paper again, and he took it from her hand while she continued to rant. “You haven’t received the notice from the school? That they’re moving all the athletic teams to the youth center for practice and games?”

  “I never opened my mail yesterday. Why are they doing this?” Troy started to read.

  “They have canceled the girls’ football league for the season! Because there aren’t enough time slots at the center to go around! But do they eliminate the boys’ program? Oh, no. Just the girls’!” Peggy was beside herself, practically hyperventilating. “It’s just powder-puff, so it has no significance. It’s expendable!”

  Oh, boy. He finished scanning the letter and gave it back to her, frowning.

  “They can’t do this!” she said.

  “Unfortunately, they can. A private school gets no state or federal funding, so they’re not subject to the same rules that public schools are. What other teams got cut? Girls’ softball? Any boys’ activities?”

  “I don’t know—I haven’t had a chance to look into it yet.”

  “Well, do me a favor. Help me get this door lined up so I can drop the pins into the hinges and then lock it. Then we’ll go back to my place and make some calls.”

  “What about the back door?” she asked. “Does the creep have a key to that?

  “He doesn’t have a key to anything anymore. Sam had the locks changed. I’ll drop off a set of these to her on the way over to Coral Gables.”

  Peggy helped him line up the hinges on the new door, and dropped in the bottom pins while he got the top one in. Troy had to plane the wood slightly so that it would open and close easily.

  She watched him as he worked, muscles in his arms flexing and sweat trickling down his back, disappearing into the waistband of his low-slung jeans. She traded in some of her anger for pure female appreciation and lust.

  Troy’s hair was still mussed from the previous night and he hadn’t shaved: sawdust particles clung to some of his beard bristle, and even in his eyelashes. She resisted the urge to wipe his face for him—he probably wouldn’t appreciate it.

  He finished planing the door, opened and closed it with satisfaction, and then grabbed a broom to clean up the mess. She took it from him. “Let me do that, and you can put away your tools.”

  He raised a brow. “You’re going to clean up after me? Hey, wanna do my laundry and make me some brownies, too?”

  Peggy whacked him in the butt with the broom. He turned, grabbed it and used it to pull her toward him. “I was only kidding,” he said against her mouth. Then he kissed her, sending sexual electricity shooting through her veins. She lost herself in his kiss for a while, as he stroked her tongue with his and explored every crevice of her mouth. She almost forgot her anger.

  He smelled a little ripe, but she didn’t care. His scent was all he-man, macho and competent. She didn’t know why it turned her on that he could fix doors and replace porch floors, but it did.

  Not that she had to get all girly about it. She was sure that she could nail planks to a deck and pop a precut door into a frame, too. So there. She broke the kiss, irritated with herself. I can do anything he can.

  An irrelevant thought popped into her head. “Do you leave a toothbrush here at Sam’s?” He’d tasted of mint.

  “Not exactly.” A smile crept onto his face. “I used Derek’s after he left for school.”

  “Ugh!”

  Troy shrugged. “It was better than dragon breath, and I figure what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him. You’re not going to give me away, are you?”

  “Depends.”

  He still had his hands on her shoulders, and they tightened in mock menace as he squinted down at her. “Depends on what?”

  She thought about it
for a second and then grinned impishly. “On your performance back at your place.”

  “My performance?”

  She twisted away and ran laughing for her car, slamming the door and locking it just before he got to the driver’s side.

  He leered at her through the glass, his hands on his hips. “If you’re brave enough to show up at my house after that little challenge, I’m gonna teach you something about performance.”

  “Ooooh, I hope so.” Peggy turned the keys in the ignition and sped away. In her rearview mirror, she saw him sprint up the steps to lock Sam’s door and then sprint back to the curb to get into the Lotus.

  SHE WAS NAKED in his pool when he arrived and began to strip off his clothes purposefully. “You better watch out, little girl,” he said. “Shark’s almost in the water.”

  She turned to climb out as he dove in, but he was too fast. He caught her neatly by the ankle and jerked her backward. She shrieked and landed with an almighty splash, feeling his arm snake around her and then his hand between her legs. She surfaced sputtering, pushed the hair out of her eyes and said, “You don’t wait for an invitation, do—oooh—you?”

  “Oh, I think you issued that before you took off in that little munchkin-mobile of yours, honey. Excuse me, what was that?”

  “Aaaaaahhh. Ohh, yes!”

  “You’re so agreeable all of a sudden.”

  “Not a munchkin—haahhhh—mobile!”

  “It’s no bigger than a doughnut,” said Troy, flipping her onto her back and capturing a nipple in his mouth. He squeezed her breasts together and licked back and forth at the tips, while she almost came on the spot. She tried to wrap her legs around him, but he wouldn’t let her.

  He raised his head and pushed her through the water over to the dual metal handrails on one side of the pool. “I think you’d better hang on to those, babe.”

  A little alarmed at his expression, she did. He pulled her body straight, so that she was floating on her back in the water. Then he parted her legs and walked between them. He cupped the cheeks of her bottom in his hands, squeezing gently and looking right at the core of her, which she found embarrassing in the bright sunlight. She wriggled and tried to move back so she could pull her knees together.