Mother Knows Best Read online

  "You're gonna let me have a beer?"

  Gregory paused in the open doorway. "A sip of beer. That's it."

  "Really?"

  "Really."

  "Aw-right!"

  It wasn't much in the scheme of things, but, at the moment, a boy's first taste of beer seemed pretty damned important and Gregory liked the fact he'd be the man to introduce Joey Marino to the wonders of malt. Kid was bound to hate it -- most kids his age would rather have a chocolate milkshake than a beer and Joey would probably be no exception. But unlike most kids, there was a good chance Joey Marino wouldn't be around when the time came to trade in his sodas for a six-pack.

  Chapter Five

  "Are you certain you're all right?" Diana peered into Mrs. Geller's eyes. "You gave me quite a scare."

  Mrs. Geller gathered her East End aplomb around her shoulders like a cashmere cardigan and managed a shaky smile. "It was those children," she said, glaring down at the twins who blessed her with cherubic smiles. "Not used to having them underfoot. Quite dangerous."

  Diana managed to hold back the observation that the girls hadn't been within ten feet of the real estate agent when she tumbled quite gracefully down the last two steps to the beach. The truth was, Mrs. Geller had been unraveling inch by controlled inch since Diana arrived at Gull Cottage one hour ago.

  "I assure you the girls and I are quite adaptable," Diana repeated as they strolled back into the solarium where Ignatius and Boris were engaged in a game of who's-going-to-blink-first. "As long as the utilities work and the major appliances stay where they are, we'll be fine."

  "You're quite the good sport about this, Ms. Travis."

  "I can afford to be," Diana said cheerfully. "My brother-in-law is picking up the tab."

  "Mr. Bradley is a kind and forgiving man."

  Diana's ears pricked up at the sound of possible gossip. "The last tenants," she said, lowering her voice conspiratorially. "How did they handle it? I could just imagine what it must have been like having the furniture snatched right out from under you."

  "The elder Ms. Piper fled before the end of the month but her niece showed tremendous fortitude and patience."

  Diana thought of the pink papier-mache shark suspended over the dining room table -- or, rather, where the dining room table had once been, the slot machine in one of the upstairs baths and the Cleopatra's barge of a bed. "She must have had a sense of humor, as well."

  "Trying circumstances, these," said Mrs. Geller, casting Boris a baleful look as he tossed food pellets at Ignatius and laughed maniacally. "One wishes to retain one's composure but one sometimes cannot."

  "What you need is a bracing cup of tea."

  If possible, Mrs. Geller looked even more forlorn. "No tea cups, Ms. Travis."

  "They took the teacups?"

  "Good china, everyday ironstone, and the flatware."

  "That does present a problem, doesn't it?" Diana thought a moment. "I promised the girls I'd call for a pizza for dinner. Why don't you join us?"

  "Oh, dear, I simply could not."

  Diana took in the woman's trembling hands and ashen color. "Frankly, Mrs. Geller, I don't think you're in any condition to drive at the moment."

  "I'm fine," the woman said, starting toward the foyer and the front door. "I really must be on my way before anything else happens."

  "What more could possibly happen?" asked Diana with a laugh. "The only things left to repossess are the toilet seats and Cleopatra's barge-bed upstairs."

  Mrs. Geller murmured something under her breath that sounded like an old and desperate prayer. "Mr. McClellan should be horsewhipped!" she exclaimed, stabbing at the air with her index finger. "Gambling and drinking away his money, then expecting good people such as you to pay the price. Dreadful, dreadful man."

  "Things happen, Mrs. Geller. Even without furniture, Gull Cottage is magnificent."

  "God bless you, Ms. Travis, and good luck. This should be quite a month for you."

  Diana thought of the twins, the cat, the bird, the paper shark, the empty rooms and the thirty days that stretched out before her and grinned. "Don't worry, Mrs. Geller. I have everything under control."

  #

  The girls' stomachs were filled with pizza and their heads with bedtime stories two hours later when Diana tucked them into their makeshift beds on the solarium floor. A soft summer breeze wafted in through the opened French doors and the sound of the surf crashing against the shore below was more soothing than a lullaby. As marvelous as that barge of a bed upstairs was, there was no way on earth Diana would ever get a wink's sleep worrying that Kath or Jenny might possibly roll off the mattress and down to the floor a few thousand feet below. In fact, she wished there were crib bars along the sides because she wasn't entirely sure she trusted herself to stay put. There was something definitely daunting about sleeping a mile or two above the place where you left your bedroom slippers.

  Mr. McClellan obviously liked to live dangerously and she couldn't help but wonder what manner of dangerous living that marvelous old bed had seen.A quick and erotic vision of her tall-dark-and-handsome knight in the black Corvette appeared and she stubbornly willed it away. No point in wishing for the impossible, was there?

  Getting the girls down for the night had been as exhausting as a four mile run in the park, but Diana had enjoyed every minute. Seeing them shiny and pink after their bath, breathing in that baby powder smell, dressing them in their bright red sleepers -- well, it was even better than seeing your byline in every major paper in the country.

  "Dee Dee?" Kath's voice, sleepy and soft, drifted over to where Diana stood by the open door.

  "What, honey?"

  "...love you...."

  Her heart did a funny kind of double-thump inside her chest. "I love you, too, sweetie. Now go to sleep."

  Did Paula have any idea how lucky she was? A husband, a home, two beautiful healthy little girls whose idea of good fortune was a warm meal and a hug -- all the things Diana had finally realized were there for the asking if she'd only make up her mind she wanted them.

  Well, her mind was made up. She was secure in her career, secure in who and what she was, and absolutely positive that marriage and motherhood were the next frontier and she, the perfect pioneer.

  Quietly she slipped out onto the deck and stretched out in the lounge chair that the repo men had somehow forgotten to take to the great auction in the sky. The house was large and, thank God, the utilities were still operating; McClellan had had the decency to make certain his tenants had water and power, if not furniture. Diana's stack of work notes and her portable computer rested in a box in the corner of what once was the family room and it wouldn't take a great deal of effort to set everything up and make a list of what needed to be accomplished tomorrow.

  But then she glanced out toward the beach below where moonlight danced across the waves and the sand shimmered silver in the glow.

  "Tomorrow," she said with a sigh. "I'll start tomorrow."

  #

  The man was tall, dark, and handsome and Diana was nothing if not willing. His eyes glittered like sapphires as he swept her into his arms and carried her up the walkway into the two-story Colonial house with the picket fence and the roses and the --

  "Call 911! I'm having a heart attack!"

  Wait a minute! What kind of fantasy dream was this, anyway?

  Diana closed her eyes more tightly and struggled to conjure up Mr. Wonderful from the little store on the North Fork once again. Okay, there he was and there she was, all safe and secure in his brawny arms as she smiled benevolently down upon the 2.5 children who --

  "Ack! My chest! My arm! Cardiac infarction! 911 fast or I'm a dead man!"

  Diana sat straight up in the lounge chair, her own heart pounding wildly inside her chest. Someone was in the house and -- dear God in heaven! -- the girls were alone in there with him.

  Stay calm...she had to stay calm. What on earth had she put into last month's column on fifty nifty ways to foil a bu
rglar? Forty-nine of them said in no uncertain terms, "Don't go in the house."

  Unfortunately Mother, in her infinite wisdom, hadn't come equipped with two toddlers to protect.

  Diana leaped to her feet and searched quickly for something she could use as a weapon. A huge wooden pepper mill rested atop a gas grille at the far end of the deck. Grabbing it, she slipped into the solarium. The twins -- thank you, God, I'll never miss another Sunday -- slept blissfully in their makeshift bedrolls. Ignatius, to her surprise, was curled up near the copper-hooded fireplace. Boris, however, was wide awake and watching her.

  She held her finger to her lips and was about to whisper "Shh!" when she realized she was attempting to reason with a bird whose IQ was probably that of a one year old child. Be quiet, Boris, she warned silently, or you're in line for Thanksgiving dinner.

  From somewhere in the vastness of Gull Cottage came the tinkling of wind chimes. Had the prowler climbed through a window on the second floor and suffered a coronary in the process? Okay, maybe she wasn't in the best of shape right now herself, but at least she wasn't calling for the paramedics.

  But then neither was anyone else, she thought as she crept toward the center staircase, her hand clutching the peppermill. Had he died? Was he sprawled on the floor in the master bedroom, gasping for air? Did she even remember one-quarter of all she'd learned when she took the CPR and YOU course at Stony Brook University last year?

  A stair board creaked beneath her bare foot and she cringed, half-expecting a quartet of prowlers to come barreling down the steps to cart her off into white slavery. What on earth were the ethics involved in saving the life of a felon anyway?

  "Such pain! What a world...what a world...."

  What on earth were the odds she was losing her mind? It sounded like the Wicked Witch from The Wizard of Oz was having the heart attack in the solarium.

  The solarium?

  Quickly Diana made her way back into the room.

  "911!" Boris ordered the second she came through the doorway. "Cardiac infarction!"

  She didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

  "Keep it down, Boris!" she cautioned, praying the girls wouldn't wake up.

  "My chest!" screeched the mynah bird. "The pain is excruciating!"

  Excruciating? The bird had a better vocabulary than most people Diana knew. Life around Gull Cottage must be rather interesting when Laurence McClellan was in residence if it gave mynah birds the speech patterns of a hypochondriac Lord Olivier.

  "Never last the night," Boris warned, his voice thready and sepulchral.

  "Go to sleep," Diana soothed, wondering what the avian equivalent of a warm glass of milk was. "You're fine."

  Boris continued to grumble, adding, "...headache...backache...angina...." to his catalogue of complaints. Diana ran upstairs and rummaged around in the huge linen closet for something to drape over the bird cage. It seemed criminal to toss a Porthault sheet over a buzzard but there were times when beggars could not be choosers.

  Boris, however, had other ideas and continued his litany of ailments until the sun rose over the Atlantic and Diana's resistance to that litany finally lowered.

  "My knees hurt," groaned Boris.

  "You don't have knees," said Diana, stifling a yawn. "They can't possibly hurt."

  In answer, Boris sneezed twice and followed up with a rib-busting cough.

  "I'm not impressed," said Diana, wishing his repertoire included sleep. "You're nothing but a feathery hypochondriac."

  Boris let loose with an ear-splitting scream worthy of a Grade Z horror movie and the twins stirred beneath their Snoopy blankets.

  Jenny, the animal lover of the two, sat up, her blue eyes wide. "Birdy sick?"

  "I don't know, honey. He -- "

  "The pain! Have you no pity?" screeched Boris, flapping his wings and hopping from perch to perch. "911! 911!"

  Kath sat up and rubbed her eyes. "Birdy sick?"

  "Birdy sick," intoned Boris, his voice mournful.

  The twins looked at Diana as if she were Vlad the Impaler. "Doctor," said Jenny, nodding wisely. "Birdy sick."

  Diana looked over at Boris. "I'd love to introduce you to Frank Perdue," she mumbled under her breath, then turned to the girls. How do you explain the concept of hypochondria to a pair of two year old girls? "I don't think Boris is really sick. He just likes to pretend he is."

  Boris, with his inimitable timing, chose that moment to emit a bloodcurdling groan and the girls burst into sympathetic tears.

  "Call the doctor!" shrieked the mynah over the wailing of the twins.

  "Call the doctor!" parroted the girls.

  "I know you're a fraud, Boris," Diana said, glaring at the feathery menace, "and I know you're trying to make a fool out of me."

  And doing a pretty darned good job of it actually. The truth was, she had no choice but to call the veterinarian named in the voluminous packet of instructions attached to Boris's cage. What kind of example in human compassion would she be giving her nieces if she ignored the bird's plaintive cries for medical attention, no matter how bogus they might be.

  "Call the doctor!" ordered Boris.

  "Call doctor!" ordered the girls.

  "Call the doctor," said Diana. Ignatius purred his way into the room and Diana motioned toward the feathered dictator. "Hors d'ouevres, anyone?"

  #

  If Dave hadn't been so tired, Gregory would have sent his partner out to Gull Cottage to check on Boris but the sight of the young man, yawning and gulping black coffee as he drooped over the credenza, gave Gregory pause.

  At least that's what he told himself.

  "I can take it for you," said Dave through another monster yawn. "I figured it was time for Boris to put his latest caretaker through her paces. Neurotic hunk of feathers..."

  "I like Boris," Gregory said blandly, thinking about Diana Travis and the look of surprise that would be on her lovely face when he showed up at the door of Gull Cottage.

  "If I weren't so tired, I'd come with you. There has to be more going on at Gull Cottage than Boris's antics. I've never seen you eager to make a hous ecall before."

  "Just keeping my hand in," said Gregory, grabbing his car keys from atop the reception desk. "Mary Ann will be in an eight o'clock. Just hang on until then."

  "Easier said than done," Dave mumbled. "Easier said than done...."

  Gregory was still laughing as he crossed the dew-laden front lawn to the parking lot. He'd seen a lot of beautiful places back in his quasi-celebrity days but few of those places came close to the tranquil beauty of early morning on the East End of Long Island. The air was still cool and the sharp salt tang of the Atlantic worked like a boost of adrenaline. His body sprang to life and he wished he had the time for a run along the beach, working his muscles to blissful exhaustion.

  The sound of Diana Travis's low, musical voice curled itself inside his ear and other forms of blissful exhaustion offered themselves up for his inspection.

  "Married with kids," he mumbled, climbing into the Vette and gunning the engine.

  Definitely off-limits when it came to summertime romance.

  He thought of her round full breasts and the shadowy cleavage not even her demure Victorian sundress could conceal. He thought of her small waist and how it led intriguingly into rounded hips and hidden pleasures.

  He thought of a husband with a pit bull and a loaded rifle.

  Sorry, Boris. Next time I'm sending Dave.

  #

  Diana leaned forward and eyed Boris. "You're a fraud, aren't you? You're trying to make a monkey out of me."

  Boris stared back at her, silent as a stone.

  "Come on, Boris, don't be shy. What is it now: heart attack? Phlebitis? Don't you want me to call 911?"

  Nothing. That pile of black feathers looked at Diana as if she were a cage cover.

  Iggy, who was perched on a ledge near the fireplace, watched the proceedings with the smug expression of all natural aristocrats.

  The f
ront doorbell chimed with tones worthy of Westminster Cathedral. "Just a cough, Boris," she pleaded, racing for the door. "A sneeze, a little angina -- something!"

  Anything to keep her from looking the fool in front of some snooty East End vet who probably catered only to pedigreed types whose ancestors came over on the Mayflower. The bell chimed again. Impatient, wasn't he? Quickly she smoothed down her hair, gave a tug to her tank top and opened the door.

  "I'm sorry I -- " She stopped and stared up at her movie-star-handsome guide from the night before. "What on earth are you doing here?"

  "Not a morning person, I take it, Ms. Travis?" He took in her shorts and bare legs and tank top in a glance and she resisted the urge to hide behind the massive front door.

  "Look, I don't think this is very funny. If you don't get back in that car of yours by the time I count to three, I'll call the police." I don't care how gorgeous you are. Weird is weird. She tilted her head to one side and glared up at him. "Did you say 'Ms. Travis'?"

  "Afraid so."

  "Don't tell me you're -- "

  "Gregory Stewart."

  "The vet?"

  "Boris's best friend."

  "I thought you ran that store on the North Shore."

  "Volunteer work. One day a week."

  "You're really the vet?"

  "Want to feel my stethoscope?"

  Dangerous question. Laughter bubbled up in her throat. "You have a way with words, I'll grant you that."

  He reached into the black bag he was carrying and pulled out a regulation-issue stethoscope and placed it in her hand. "Now do you believe me?"

  Before she could answer, the twins toddled over to the doorway.

  "Birdy sick," said Jenny, tugging at his pants leg. Kath clutched a small box of Cornflakes and nodded in agreement.

  "They believe me," said Gregory Stewart.

  "They're two years old."

  "Where's Boris? In the solarium, as usual?"

  She hesitated. "How do you --"

  "Did he say he was having a cardiac infarction?"

  "Yes, but --"

  "Call 911 or he's a dead man?"

  "Yes." Diana hesitated. "I don't know what to believe, but I know most men don't travel around with stethoscopes and dog biscuits." She flung the door open wide. "I give up. Come on in."