Despite all Molly’s scheming to throw Jared and me together, even she couldn’t have planned the bit about the plumbing. That was the unintentional crowning touch in Molly’s little design.
The receptionist in the spa area looked up with a worried expression as I entered, ready and eager to be turned into a summer beverage by my green tea and lime leaf body treatment.
“The plumbing isn’t fixed yet,” she apologized. “We have you scheduled at the same time as one of our male guests. We’ll have to use adjoining treatment areas. We will make sure you don’t cross in the hallway but if that’s a problem…”
Nothing was a problem to me right now. After last night with Jared, I was floating slightly above the ground on my own little happy cloud. I waved my hand dismissively. I could share the building with an ice floe full of polar bears and not mind today.
As I walked toward my appointment, I heard a loud complaint. Someone had gotten here before me.
“That stuff smells like a Chinese restaurant…I don’t care how much it costs,” the familiar voice roared. “I’ll pay you double to take it away!”
Jared’s take on these relaxing ablutions was quite different from mine, I thought as I tried to snuff out the grin spreading across my face.
I really don’t know how much money he had forked out by the end of the morning, but I did hear him offer a hundred dollars to the reflexologist if she would just leave his feet alone.
The full body wrap that afternoon was much like being wrapped in warm, wet canvas and steeped like a minty organic tea bag until every toxin, even those hanging on for dear life, was sucked up and out of my body.
I recognized when Jared entered the treatment room on the other side of the wall by his incessant patter of questions.
“What’s that smell? Why is it so steamy in here? Did you graduate from the Spanish inquisition Spa School, too? Whaddayamean you’re going to wrap me up in sheets? I’m not a cabbage roll, you know.”
Even now that I’d fallen head over heels for him, I couldn’t help smiling. There’s something so helpless and absurd about a tough-guy businessman being subjected to the mysterious world of pampering and relaxation.
There’s also something rather pathetic about that same man pleading to have his arms unwrapped so he didn’t feel like King Tut about to be placed in his sarcophagus.
By the time I was done with my massage later that afternoon, I was so relaxed that my legs were soft rubber. I groped my way to my room and collapsed across the bed. I don’t believe I even twitched before I fell asleep.
I woke up at five, still in the rag-doll position I’d fallen in. There was a pool of drool on the pillow by my mouth and I had to lift my eyelids with my index finger. Now that’s a sound sleep.
My phone rang as I finished putting on my makeup. It was a jarring sound in my tranquil cloud. I wanted to ignore it but I’m far too snoopy to do that.
“Hello?”
“Sammi? How is it?” Molly sounded like a child with a new toy. “Is it wonderful?”
“Yes, it is, you sneaky thing, you! Bliss!”
“Are you mad at me?”
“Let’s just say it’s a good thing you weren’t here when I discovered that your brother also checked in for the weekend.”
“And now?” Her voice practically quivered with hope.
“You were right and I was wrong. He’s a gem, Molly.”
She chortled with delight. “I told you so! Isn’t he just the best?”
“The best.”
“Are you friends now?”
More than!
“Yes, dear. Mission accomplished.”
I could practically feel her lean back with a satisfied sigh.
Then she seemed to think better of relaxing quite yet. “How’s Jared feeling about this?”
I thought about last night and grinned to myself. “Fine and dandy, I believe.”
“I love it! I shouldn’t have called and interrupted you, but I had to know. One of my friends invited me to her lake cabin for the week and I won’t be here when you get back. Now I can go to the lake happy, content that the two of you finally got to know each other without me in the middle, confusing matters.”
“You don’t confuse me, Molly.” Something had occurred to me this morning that might actually clear up some confusion. “In fact, I’ve been thinking about you a lot the past couple days. About why you’ve had such a hard time at Hamilton and Hamilton…”
“That can wait, Sammi. When I get back on Thursday I want to hear everything.” She sounded breathless and in high spirits. “I see my ride pulling up. Tell Jared ‘hi’ and that I’d planned to call him but, as usual, I’ve run out of time. Give him a kiss for me, will you?”
Gladly.
“You’re the greatest, Sammi.”
I felt tears scratch the backs of my eye. “And you’re pretty terrific yourself, Molly. Now go have fun.”
She hung up, and the dial tone hummed in my ear.
Thank You, Lord, for the gift of friendship. My cup overflows. It is shaken down and spilling over in my life now that I know Molly and Jared.
What more could I want? I thought, as I smoothed my hair into a soft wave that fell across one eye. It feels as though I already have it all and…yet…the part of me that wants my world in order, loves planning and mistrusts impulse is agitating within me. It’s the strong, vocal part of me that always says, “Better safe than sorry, Sammi” and “Plan ahead.” It’s the same part of me, of course, that reminds me that Barbie was a fool to let go of a steady, reliable guy like Ken, that tells me that following my heart might lead me into disaster.
And now I’ve fallen in love…in the short space of a weekend…with my former client’s brother…whom I disliked intensely only forty-eight hours ago. This is totally out of character for me, as foreign a language to me as Swahili.
It’s almost too much for a pragmatic, cool-headed Scandinavian girl to bear.
“There you are!” Jared waited for me by the door, and by the way his eyes lit up when I walked in, I knew he was overjoyed to see me.
What an amazing turnaround it had been for us in the last few hours. We’d not only made peace with each other, we were buzzing around each other like two bugs drawn to each other’s light. Molly’s idea was inspired. If we could send all our world leaders to a spa for a month or two, they’d be so mellow we could get things like world peace worked out and have time left over for a facial.
As his fingers touched my elbow and he cradled my arm in his hand, a sense of rightness washed over me like a blessing. It was a rightness I’d never felt with anyone else in my life.
Is he the one for me, Lord? Now? When I was least expecting it?
Isn’t that the way with God? He’s a Father who loves to surprise us with gifts far more wonderful than we could ever expect or design for ourselves. I looked up and into Jared’s eyes—a gift in itself for someone my height—and saw my feelings mirrored there.
For a person who is risk-averse like me, who likes preplanning and loves caution, this is a brand-new experience. Prudence was replaced by infatuation as I drifted through dinner in a delirious haze. Cardboard would have tasted divine. I could have been eating chicken lips and fish eyebrows and loved it all. And what made it all the more wonderful was that Jared seemed to share my happiness.
“I certainly underestimated you,” I admitted. “I was sure your heart was made of stone—or ice—and now…”
“Molly says it’s my biggest flaw—being too soft with her.” His voice softened.
“That reminds me. She called. I’m supposed to tell you ‘hi.’ She’d planned to call you as well but was running late, and her ride came. Apparently she is headed to a friend’s lake cabin.”
“She called you?” He seemed surprised.
“She wanted to know if I’d learned to like her big brother as much as she does.”
His eyes twinkled. “And?”
“As much. Maybe even more.”
“Imagine that.” His voice softened and the way he looked at me made my heart leap in my chest.
“And she told me to give you this.” I leaned forward and placed a gentle kiss on his cheek.
“Now I have even more to thank her for.” He shook his head and I saw sadness creep into his expression. “Sometimes she just breaks my heart.”
What a strange thing to say!
“You haven’t heard any of the Molly stories, have you?” he asked ruefully.
“What do you mean?”
“Molly, the Lake and the Mislaid Car, Molly and the Missing Children, Molly and the Mystery of the Lost Purse, Vanishing Graduation Diploma and Straying Lawn Mower?” He sighed and leaned back in his chair as if this might take a long, long time.
“Sounds better than a Nancy Drew series,” I commented. “Tell me more.”
“When Molly was sixteen, my father bought her a car. Nothing fancy. A used Cavalier. Granted, it wasn’t much of a car, small and inexpensive, but it got good gas mileage. Molly was only supposed to drive it to specified places like school, the park near home and to a few reliable friends’ homes.
“My sister has always been…distracted. She’s always thinking ahead and sometimes forgets to live in the present. Anyway, she and her friends decided to have an afternoon birthday party for one of the girls in her group and hold it at the park. It’s pretty there, a nice little lake, more of a pond, really, shelters, fire pits, the works.
“Molly, as usual, volunteered to do about seven things, including decorations, the cake, start the fire…well, you get the idea.”
I nodded. I could just see her bustling around, trying to make things nice for the birthday girl.
“She went early, of course, so by the time the other girls arrived, she had everything ready. Apparently they had a good time, because it was early evening when the party began to break up. Molly was taking down the decorations when one of the girls asked her if she needed a ride home.
“Of course, Molly said she’d driven herself and turned to point to her car. That’s the first anyone noticed that the car was missing.”
“Stolen?” I gasped. “Poor kid!”
“Not exactly. The police and my parents were called. It was the first officer to arrive to take down a description of the car who noticed the rear bumper of a red Cavalier jutting out of the lake just below the girls’ campsite.”
I clamped a hand over my mouth to keep my jaw from dropping.
Jared looked both weary and amused as he said, “Close as anyone can figure, Molly drove to the shelter, unloaded the decorations and cake and then parked the car. Unfortunately she parked the car close to the lake in a spot where the ground falls fairly steeply toward the water. There’s no real shore there and there’s a drop-off. That, combined with the fact that Molly turned off the ignition without shifting the car into Park or Neutral, made it easy for the car to roll into the water.”
I suddenly felt much of Jared’s weariness—and no little portion of his amusement, as well.
“The girls admitted to having a boom box on full blast so no one heard a thing when the car rolled into the water.”
“What did your parents…the police…” I heard myself stammering.
“They called someone to retrieve the car, but no one even scolded Molly. She took care of that herself.”
He smiled at my quizzical gaze. “She grounded herself for three months, took away all her own dating privileges and promised to get a job to pay for having the car refurbished.”
“That’s harsh.”
“She’s always harsh with herself. Far worse than my parents would have been. I think she’s so disappointed with herself sometimes that whatever punishment she metes out is more painful than anyone else would ever dream up.”
“So did she do all those things?”
“My parents made her pay for the car. The rest they didn’t press. Nobody wants Molly miserable—except Molly.” Jared chuckled. “She told everyone from then on that she was on probation and that they should all hide their keys when she came around.”
“Well, it was just a one-time incident.” I looked into Jared’s eyes. “Wasn’t it?”
“Not exactly. There’s also the story of Molly and the Lost Car at the Airport Parking Lot and dozens of Molly and the Missing Keys stories.”
“Well, at least that was the worst of it.”
“Not exactly.” Jared played with his spoon, tapping it on the water glass, the centerpiece, his coffee cup. It was as though thinking about these things made him nervous.
“What do you mean, ‘not exactly’?”
“There was the time Molly lost some children.”
“I’m not sure I want to hear this one.”
“It has a happy ending.”
“Okay, then.”
“While she was babysitting for our neighbor, who has three children, Molly got the brilliant idea that she would take the kids into downtown Minneapolis to go Christmas shopping for the children’s mother. After that, just think major department store, lost children, chaos and panic.”
I sometimes feel lost, chaotic and panicky when I’m Christmas shopping. I could hardly imagine Molly as a teenager with three little kids…
“Apparently, Molly got distracted by some jewelry and took her eyes off the children for a few moments.”
“Quick. Tell me the happy ending.”
“It didn’t come quickly. She did have the presence of mind to ask for help immediately. They locked the doors and scoured every inch of the store.”
“And the children?”
“It seemed that they’d vanished into thin air.”
“Where did they find them?”
“In the last place they looked.”
“Of course.”
“The kids had found the door that leads to the outside display windows. It being Christmas, there was one entire scene of Santa’s workshop, another of a line of children waiting to see Santa and a third of a family of kids waiting by the fire for Santa to arrive.”
“And?”
“Apparently the children had crawled into the window displays and played there for quite some time, to the delight of the people on the sidewalk. If anyone had walked out the door and asked if three little kids had gone by, they would have found them immediately. By the time police got to them, however, one child had crawled into Santa’s lap and was sound asleep, another had lain down on the floor with the mannequins of the children in repose waiting for Santa Claus and had fallen asleep with them. The third, the oldest, had gathered all the loose toys from the elves at the workshop and taken them behind a curtain to play with them. He had made a Lincoln log house, a fort of blocks and was putting the finishing touches on a Lego airport when they found him.”
“And Molly?”
“She’d sworn herself to a life of chastity, bread and water and no makeup for a month by the time we got there. She also offered to give up television, the phone in her room, popcorn and chocolate. She was trying to think up a worse punishment, but she hadn’t yet been able to commit herself to an entire lifetime without mascara and blush.”
I laughed, because Jared made it sound so funny, but I saw that Molly’s external clutter and chaos had much to do with her internal goings-on. Before I could speak, Jared leaned forward and put his hand over mine, and I felt a zing of energy bolt up my arm like lightning. It knocked out all my power receptors, and I was putty in his hands.
“Enough about Molly. More about you.”
And I was almost sure he added under his breath, “And me.”
We’d been talking for some time, utterly unaware of everything around us when I remembered the thought that had come into my head earlier.
“Jared, do you think it’s possible that Molly has ADD?”
“Attention Deficit Disorder? I doubt she’s been evaluated. I’m not sure that twenty years ago people were quite so aware of it as they are now. Why?”
“Because it would explain so much of Molly’s behavior.”
Jared looked mildly interested. “Really? I don’t know much about it, other than it seems to be in the news a lot these days.”
“I’m no specialist, but I have a cousin whose daughter has ADD. In fact, I feel rather stupid that I didn’t consider this before now. I’d assumed it had been ruled out in Molly’s case, but she has all the signs.”
“Such as?” He was twirling a lock of my hair with his index finger and not paying much attention to what I was saying.
I was having difficulty paying attention to what I was saying, too, but I forged ahead. “Distractibility, a short attention span, bed wetting late into childhood, doesn’t listen well to directions, misplaces things, is easily bored, restless, fidgety, can’t sit still, impulsive, trouble with follow-through, inefficient…” The longer I talked, the more impact the symptoms had on my consciousness.
On Jared’s, too, apparently. He straightened and let my curl fall from his finger. “You’re describing Molly exactly.”
“I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before, other than I don’t usually think of ADD manifesting in adults. It has to, of course, but we hear so much about diagnosing it in children these days…”
Jared’s forehead was wrinkled into a frown. “It makes sense. Perfect sense, in fact. I wish I knew more….” Then he shook himself like a big wet dog just out of a pond. “But we can discuss it later. Tonight—” and he touched the tip of his finger to my lips and drew it down the curve of my cheek “—is for us.”