Waltz This Way Read online

  Mel’s eyes moved from Myriam’s small frame upward to the larger one blocking out the floodlights of the rec center.

  “Ah! There’s my boy!” Myriam, usually sour of face unless she was in the height of a prank, softened until she was almost unrecognizable. She introduced him like he was visiting royalty, there was such pride in her voice. “Mel, this is my nephew. Honey, meet Mel with the stupid last name and our part-time social director here at the Village. She’s helping Maxine. You know the lady who married that sweet piece of booty Campbell Barker?”

  Mel covered her mouth with her forearm to keep her snort to herself.

  A tall, broad-chested man with a navy-blue T-shirt and faded jeans stuck out his hand after sending his aunt a look of warning.

  “Nice to meet you, Mel with the stupid last name.”

  Myriam snickered, latching on to her nephew’s thickly corded arm.

  She gave him her hand. “Do you have a stupid first name?” she inquired sweetly.

  “I do.” He smiled then—a smile that was dashing. The white of his teeth gleamed, the bronze of his skin glowed. “It’s Drew. Drew McPhee.”

  “A fine Irish name,” she commented, refusing to be awed by his thick, chocolatey hair with sun-kissed gold highlights and his light blue eyes in a shade so unusual they held her mesmerized.

  “He’s only half Irish,” Myriam snorted. “The other half of him’s Puerto Rican—just like his aunt.”

  He let go of Mel’s hand, and she realized her palm had become sweaty when the humid breeze hit it.

  “Aunt Myriam’s still holding a grudge that my mother married a McPhee instead of a Lopez or a Suarez. Any ez’ll do, right, Aunt Myriam?” he said on an indulgent chuckle, squeezing Myriam’s hand, then giving it an affectionate pat.

  Myriam made a face up at her nephew. Clearly, her discontent with the male population at large extended to family, too. “Selena marrying your father is all-out war as far as I’m concerned. No good Puerto Rican wants to marry an Irishman. None.”

  “A war that’s lasted forty-four years now,” Drew said with a wink.

  “C’mon, Aunt Myriam—Mom’s waiting for you to come over and help beat Dad up. After all, it is Saturday night, the night when all good Irishmen get a beating from their Puerto Rican sisters-in-law. It’s fast becoming a sport.”

  Myriam reached up and pinched his lean cheek. “You were always funny. Hey, you know, why don’t we invite Mel over, too? She’s got nothin’ better to do on a Saturday night, bein’ divorced and all. She might have to wait forever to get a date because she’s so old, and I’m sure she’d love some of your father’s crappy corned beef and ‘fart all night long’ cabbage. Whaddya say, Mel?”

  Mel refused to let slip a horrified gasp and instead lobbed the ball back at the feisty senior. “How do you know I don’t have a date, Myriam? Maybe I have some hot stud just waiting on the edge of his seat for me to leave senior speed dating and join him for our secret rendezvous.” She fluttered her lashes.

  Myriam guffawed as though Mel had just told her she had a date with Robert Pattison. “You don’t, either. You hole up at your dad’s and lick your wounds every night. You know it. I know it. Every senior from here to eternity in the Village knows it. So instead of crying in your beer, you should just date my Drew,” she decided.

  Mel dragged the door of the rec center shut and chuckled with a shake of her head. “Oh, I don’t think so, Myriam. What if we got married? Then you wouldn’t just have a half-Irish, half—Puerto Rican nephew, but a half-Italian, half-Polish, divorced-from-a-Russian niece. I think the world would collapse under all those countries, foreign and otherwise. Besides, I have a hot date with my dad tonight, and Weezer needs to be walked. No one wants Weezer to potty in the house, especially me.”

  Myriam gave her a mocking smile, but her eyes were kind. “That’s fine, dear. You go home to your very exciting life with your dog and your cranky old father, and I’ll go home with my handsome nephew without you. See if I ever impose you on any of my family again.” She threw up a hand to wave a dismissive goodbye before heading off into the darkness toward the parking lot.

  Drew rocked back on his heels, crossing his tanned forearms, which had a thick dusting of hair, over his chest. “So if I said she was a handful and we all try to keep her in line but she’s like corralling greased cats, would that make whatever she’s done tonight better?”

  Drew asked with an amused grin that left deep grooves on either side of his mouth.

  “What makes you think she’s done something?”

  “My Aunt Myriam’s always doing something, and it’s usually not nice.”

  The corner of her mouth lifted. “I like her spirit.”

  “We’d like it more if it didn’t always involve hand-to-hand combat.”

  Mel found herself with her second genuine smile of the night on her face. “Okay, that would probably make my job a lot easier, but even with the shuffleboard showdown and tonight’s wholly embarrassing poke at the size of Norm Peterson’s, ahem, man parts during senior speed dating, she’s pretty funny.”

  “She’s a terror.”

  “That’s a fair adjective,” she responded, forcing a bland expression. His bigness made her uncomfortably aware—of everything.

  The way he smelled. The way his jeans molded against the muscles of his thighs before giving way to long calves. The way his eyes crinkled in the corners when he smiled. The way he towered over her, making her five-foot-two frame feel very small. Mel swept around him, making her way down the rec center’s entryway.

  “Let me walk you to your car.”

  Mel smiled then frowned at the shiver his voice created. That’d be nice. To be walked to her car by someone as deliciously fine-looking as Drew. But you had to have a car to be walked to.

  “I’m fine, thanks. I walked.”

  “You live here?”

  Among the scent of mothballs and liniment. Oh, yes, at the ripe, old age of forty, she lived at home. In a retirement village. Like the crazy cat lady, sans cats. “For the moment. With my dad,” was her cool reply.

  “And Weezer.”

  “Right. Weezer, too.” His steps echoed hers, moving in heavy clunks toward the parking lot.

  “How about we give you a lift home?”

  “But then you’d be late for corned beef and ‘fart all night long’ cabbage. Really, I’m fine. I could use the exercise.” The moment she said it, she realized she’d given him permission to scan her goodies—which were aplenty—to discover if she really needed crunches.

  “Said who?”

  Her ex-husband. The tabloids. Every show from here to Ellen.

  “My scale,” she remarked dryly.

  His eyebrow, a darker brown than his hair, cocked upward.

  “Your scale is as stupid as your last name—which I didn’t get, by the way.”

  Mel stopped at the end of the sidewalk and looked up at big, handsome, smiling Drew. “It’s a mouthful.”

  “A mouthful’s plenty, if you ask me.”

  Mel blushed hot red. “Cherkasov.” She waited while he made the connection between her and Stan.

  Yet, he surprised her when he said, “So, Mel Cherkasov, since Myriam can’t convince you to come have some dinner with almost total strangers and I can’t talk you into a lift back home, will I see you around the Village? I do a lot of shuffling back and forth with Aunt Myriam. She’s the driver from hell, so we avoid letting her do it, if we can.”

  He’d see her only if it meant there was money to be had in leaving her father’s house. It was the only thing that could remotely motivate her to breathe outdoor air or, for that matter, get involved in anything other than a can of chocolate frosting with sprinkles and some salt-and-pepper kettle chips.

  “Anything can happen.”

  “Good to know. I hope anything happens again soon.” He grinned before taking long strides toward his truck.

  Her heart jumped a little only to settle back into her chest with
indifference, which was exactly the position it belonged in.

  “Say good night to Myriam for me,” she called, heading in the opposite direction.

  That direction being without purpose.

  Or meaning.

  Or hope.

  Or a foolproof plan to murder Stan.

  Yet.

  Maybe she was missing a crucial detail in all those reruns she’d been watching. That meant more CSI reruns and definitely more chocolate frosting.

  * * * *

  Drew slid into the truck, turning the key in the ignition and eyeing his aunt in the passenger seat. “So who is she, this Mel?”

  Myriam shifted to set her penetrating gaze on him. “Do I hear the voice of interest there, kiddo?”

  “You hear the voice of a man who wants to know who all your victims are so he can apologize to them when someone knocks you off.”

  Myriam’s cackling filled the interior of the truck. “I like Mel. She doesn’t know I do, but I do. I give her a hard time at every turn, and still, she has a smart aleck answer for everything. That’s gutsy. She’s had a bad time of it lately. Her ex-husband’s some kinda idiot.”

  He kept his comment noncommittal, while massaging the back of his neck. “Interesting.”

  “Wanna know why?”

  “Do I?”

  “Don’t answer a question with a question, mister. She’s that Stan Cherkasov’s ex-wife.”

  “Nuthin’ but a hound dog, I take it?” Drew quoted an Elvis song, one of his favorites.

  Myriam scoffed. “In spades. I can’t believe you don’t know who Stan Cherkasov is.”

  “I’m stumped.”

  “Don’t you ever watch TV, boy?”

  “When do I have the time for TV with my job at the school and Nathan running me ragged all the time with his after-school clubs?”

  “He’s a smart one, my Natty.”

  Pride welled in his chest for his son, a genius. Literally. “You’d better not let him hear you call him that. He’s decided now that he’s twelve, he’s Nate or Nathan. Period.”

  She pursed her lips in displeasure, tucking her chubby fingers into her purse. “He’ll be whatever I say he’ll be and like it. Now back to Mel. Poor Mel. Her ex-husband’s a bigtime choreographer on that show Dude, You Can Dance. A Russian—the swine.”

  “Dude, what?” What kind of a ridiculous name for a show was that?

  “Dude, You Can Dance,” she reiterated with impatience. “The show where they find kids who can dance, and then they throw them on stage and let the viewing audience judge their performances. It’s a big hit in reality TV. Bet if you ask my Natty, he’ll know what it is.”

  She gave him a sidelong glance like he was an idiot for not having a clue what she was talking about.

  Drew sighed in search of patience. His aunt loved gossip, especially Hollywood gossip. He found himself wondering if Myriam had grilled poor Mel and tried not to visibly cringe at the notion. “I don’t watch much TV, Aunt Myriam. I definitely don’t watch some dance show.”

  “That’s because you’re a buffoon with two left feet and no appreciation for the art,” she said, giving him an affectionate slap on the knee. “Anyways, he got caught doing the dirty with another, much younger choreographer from the show named Yelena. She has no last name. Least ways not when they introduce her. Caught by a fan that took a picture of it and sold it to the highest bidder. Poor Mel found out he was cheating on her from those nasty reporters on the television show Hollywood Scoop when they showed up like vultures at her failing dance studio.”

  He remained silent, unable to identify with a situation resembling some scene in a movie—though, he did experience a twist in his gut for the kind of humiliation that must have stirred up for Mel. Instead, he let his mind wander back to Mel’s mouth, wide and generous, and her hips, supple and round, while his aunt continued to talk.

  “Poor thing. She was all over the TV, her big eyes all wide with surprise when the one reporter asked her how it felt to be left for a younger woman. Even though I just know she tried to hide it, she had no idea. Her husband, that Stan, blindsided her, the jack-off. I don’t know the exact details, but I can get ’em, if you want ’em. The story around these parts says he took everything from her—even her little dance studio—and she had to move back here with her dad, Joe Hodge, because she has no money. She’s workin’ part time in the Village for Maxine. You remember Maxine, don’t you? She’s got that employment agency—”

  “Trophy Jobs Inc., right?” Drew interjected, pulling into his parents’ neighborhood, the familiar street lined with oak trees that would soon change color. He’d seen Maxine here and there when he’d come to pick up his aunt from the rec center, but he didn’t know a whole lot about her other than she organized the events at the Village his aunt attended and often created chaos at.

  “That’s the one. Bunch of the retired seniors who had big, important jobs before they retired donate a lot of their time there to help women who up and get dumped by their old husbands for younger women because their boobies are saggin’.”

  Drew barked a laugh. It didn’t look like Mel’s boobs were sagging from the quick glimpse he’d tried to snatch while she avoided his invitation for a ride home. In fact, they’d looked damn fine under her purple blouse with the white buttons.

  “So the ‘trophy’ in Trophy Jobs has significance?”

  “Yep. Maxine called it that because she was a trophy wife who was dumped and left with shit for Shinola. She’s famous in the Village. Everybody loves Max, me included. Nowadays, she helps other women that were married to jack-offs and have no job skills that’re marketable. Mel’s sort of her part-time assistant in the Village.”

  Drew grunted his disapproval. He had no regard for lazy women who didn’t want to do anything but stay out late club hopping. “So Maxine has an employment agency for women who’ve done nothing but sit on their asses unless they were shopping or ordering room service? Is her employment agency just a waiting room where they can have their nails done while they wait to find the next rich man?”

  He knew that kind of woman. The kind who loved anything that had a ridiculous price tag on it just because it said some fancy designer’s name.

  Myriam whacked him on his shoulder, making him wince. “Don’t you go sayin’ that about Mel. Not in front of me, mister. She’s not that way—not even a little. She’s a nice girl, a nice-lookin’ girl who can dance, from what I hear. She used to be a ballroom champion till she gave it all up to marry that cheater. I love ballroom dancing. Did I ever tell ya about me and your Uncle Ernesto?”

  Her smile took on that distant quality it always did when she reminisced about his late uncle. “When we were dating, we used to go over to a place called Dickey’s Dance Lounge in Brooklyn and really cut a rug. Boy, my Ernesto could do one helluva cha-cha.” She clucked her tongue for emphasis.

  He’d heard the story a million times, seen his mother and his aunt fool around in the kitchen together doing a salsa, but he and a dance floor were like sworn enemies. Not gonna happen—no matter how often his mother and his sisters taunted him.

  Drew pulled into his parents’ driveway and turned off the ignition in his truck. “So she’s a professional dancer?”

  No wonder she couldn’t find a job. There wasn’t much call for that in Riverbend, New Jersey.

  “Yeaaah, buddy,” Myriam drawled with a tone that told him he’d better tread lightly when referring to her precious Mel. “A former champion ballroom dancer. Quit sayin’ it like she’s got the bubonic plague. She was one hot piece o’ work back in her day, and nobody as nice as Mel deserves to be dumped and left with nothing. ’Specially seein’ as she’s stuck with the crazy bunch of seniors like we have at the Village.”

  “Excluding yourself from that equation, I suppose.”

  “Damn right, I’m excluded. I’m ornery, not crazy,” she twittered with a grin full of dentures and mischief.

  Drew jumped out and made his way to Myriam�
��s side of the car.

  He opened the door, his curiosity over the hot Mel piqued. “How could he leave her with nothing? Didn’t the divorce laws protect her?”

  Christ knew they’d protected his ex-wife. Those laws took a huge chunk of his paycheck to pay her alimony, which she didn’t exactly use for her greater good.

  “She signed one of those prenups everyone’s always talking about gettin’ when you marry somebody rich. And to think, they’d been married for something like twenty years. I tell ya this, kiddo. If I ever see him, I’ll spit on him and his fancy girlfriend Yela-whoever.”

  Drew gave her his arm and helped her out of the car. “Wow. Where’d all this love for Mel come from? You don’t like anyone, Aunt Myriam. Better not let Dad hear you all warm and fuzzy-ish over some stranger. He’s been in the family for almost forty-four years, and he still gets no respect. He’ll get jealous.”

  Myriam snorted in the darkening night while they made their way up the slate walkway to his parents’ front door, lined with colorful mums just waiting to bloom. “Your dad’s an old coot. And I like Mel. She’s a sassy-mouth. I like anyone who won’t take my crap.”

  Yeah. Even he had to admit, he admired a woman who could handle his aunt.

  His son, Nate, threw the front door open to reveal the typical swarm of family that gathered. Saturday night was a tradition at the McPhee household, one Drew hated to own up to treasuring but did nonetheless.

  Saturdays meant wall-to-wall kids from toddlers to teens. It meant his three sisters and their spouses all crowded into his mother’s kitchen for corned beef and enchiladas with flan for dessert. It meant Tito Puente with some Irish folk music in the mix.

  It meant family. How the two had ever managed to blend such completely different cultures was often a topic of conversation and much laughter.

  “There’s my Natty,” Myriam cooed, holding out her arms to him.

  Nate, almost five-five now, rolled his eyes, but reluctantly let his great aunt envelop him in a hug. Myriam kissed him on the top of his dark head before plowing toward the kitchen to begin her sarcastic inspection of the night’s feast.