Wife Wanted. Christine Rimmer
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the tourists to a minimum and meant that even though the lake was near the Cities, they saw few other cars on the road.
“Beautiful, isn’t it, son?” Rick asked, as if he actually might get an answer.
But of course there wasn’t one. A quick glance at Toby, in the passenger seat, reminded him not to get his hopes up. The five-year-old sat staring straight ahead, his thin face a blank.
Rick resisted the urge to ask, “Toby, did you hear me?” He’d asked that question too many times in the past six months. Silence had always been the answer.
Rick checked the numbers on the mailboxes as they passed driveways that wound off into the trees, presumably on their way to lakefront houses like the one he sought.
“Almost there,” he said, when the numbers neared the one Bud Tankhurst had given him. He tried to speak casually, to show no frustration with his son’s unwillingness to communicate. Dr. Dawkins, Toby’s psychiatrist, said that it was important to talk to Toby, to include him in conversations, whether Toby seemed to respond or not. Dr. Dawkins said that Toby did hear and understand, that he was improving steadily, and that with time and the right kind of attention he would be just fine. Sometimes Rick wasn’t so sure of that. But he followed the doctor’s orders anyway, as best he could.
Rick slowed the car when the mailbox with the address he sought loomed up on the right. “Here we are,” he said, as if the words mattered. He turned into the gravel drive, spotting a shingled roof through the thick branches of the trees.
Two hundred yards later, he pulled up in front of a two-story house with white clapboard siding on the bottom story and shingles on the dormers and touches of gingerbread trim at the eaves. Rose trees lined the white-pebbled walk to the front porch—a deep, inviting porch, furnished with white wicker armchairs and love seats. There was even a swing.
A good-size expanse of lawn surrounded the farmhouse. There were several lush trees planted in the lawn, their leaves fluttering in the slight breeze. Above, the sky was soft as a baby’s blanket, and as innocently blue. Behind the house lay the lake, which glittered invitingly in the afternoon sun.
“It’s perfect,” Rick said to Toby.
And just as he said that, someone inside the house decided it was time for a little rock and roll. Loud rock and roll.
Rick couldn’t help grinning. “So much for perfection.” He recognized the song: “Piece of My Heart.” It had been a favorite of a reclusive girl who roomed down the hall from him during his last year at college. The singer was Janis Joplin, a blues-rocker who had lived hard and died young and whose wild, rough life was there in every raw, impassioned note she sang.
Rick glanced at Toby, and found blue eyes just like his own watching him.
“Stay here. I’ll see what’s going on.” Rick had to raise his voice a notch to compete with the tortured wails that came from the house.
Toby granted his father a tiny nod. Or at least Rick thought he nodded.
But whether Toby had nodded or not, Rick knew it would be safe to leave him alone for a few minutes. Toby was emotionally unresponsive, but very well behaved. He might not acknowledge Rick’s instructions, but Toby always did what he was told.
From the house, competing with Janis’s agonized moans, came what sounded like the howling of a dog.
What the hell was going on in there?
Rick cast his blank-faced son one last reassuring glance and then went to find out.
By the time he’d lifted a hand to ring the doorbell, the dog inside was yowling as loud and hard as Janis. And Rick thought he could hear another voice, human and female, wailing right along with Janis and the dog. Of course, when he rang the bell, he got no answer. No one inside there could possibly hear anything over all the racket.
Rick tried the door; it was unlocked. He pushed the door inward on a foyer that smelled of sunshine and bees-wax. Without the door to muffle it, the screeching and howling swelled even louder.
Stepping inside, Rick moved toward the sound, which came from beyond a pair of open doors to his left. He halted between the doors, on the threshold of an old-fashioned front parlor.
He saw immediately that there was a stereo on the far wall, from which Janis’s voice was blaring. On the sofa across the room sat a Saint Bernard, its massive head tipped back, its throat working enthusiastically to produce an earsplitting approximation of doggy harmony.
The dog wasn’t the only one trying to keep up with Janis. Between the door where Rick stood and the sofa where the dog yowled, a shapely brunette dressed in a spangled forties cocktail dress and gaudy platform shoes wiggled and wailed. She wore a fringed lamp shade for a hat, and she was shrieking right along with Janis and the baying Saint Bernard. Rick leaned in the doorway, wondering with some amusement what she would do when she turned around and discovered him standing there.
It took a few moments to find out. The brunette was too involved in her performance to realize that she’d attracted an audience. But the dog noticed Rick right away. It lowered its huge head, gave a deep, soft woof, and got down from the couch. Tongue lolling, it circled the dancing, singing woman, then loped over to Rick and nuzzled his thigh with a large, wet nose. Rick granted the animal a quick scratch behind a giant-size ear.
The woman went right on singing her heart out. Rick watched the action. Though he had yet to see her face, she looked great from behind. Apparently the lamp shade obscured her view of the dog, because it took her a while to figure out that the animal was no longer sitting on the sofa, bellowing along with her. Readjusting her lamp shade, she shimmied around, no doubt wondering where the dog had gone. She froze in midscreech when she caught sight of Rick.
“Oh!” She whipped the shade off her head, her creamy skin flooding with agonized color. “How long have you been standing there?” She had to shout to be heard over the din Janis was making.
Rick did his best to stop grinning. “Long enough,” he yelled back.
She made a pained face. “I was afraid you’d say that.”
“I rang the bell, but—”
She waved a hand. “Never mind. I understand.” She trudged to the bare-bulbed floor lamp in the corner, where she spent a moment putting the shade back where it belonged. After that, she marched over and turned off the stereo.
She started apologizing as soon as the music stopped. “You must be my prospective tenant. Excuse us. We just… Well, Bernie begged me to play Janis, so I did. He loves that song.”
“Bernie,” Rick echoed. “That would be the dog?”
“Um-hm.”
“The dog can talk?”
“Not exactly. But he always gets his point across. When he wants to hear Janis, he brings me the CD.”
“A bright dog.”
“Extremely.”
Neither of them paid much attention as the dog in question wandered out the door, wagging his tail and panting. The woman swiped moist hair off her brow, drew her shoulders back and closed the distance between them, holding out her hand.
“I’m Natalie. Natalie Fortune.”
Rick took her hand. It was soft, a little hot from all that dancing and singing—and a nice fit in his. She smelled of clean sweat and soap and flowers. He introduced himself. “Rick Dalton.”
Still a little breathless, she put a hand against her chest. “And there’s a little boy, right?”
“Right.”
She looked down at their joined hands, and he realized that the handshaking was already done. He released her. She stepped back just a little and gazed up at him. She had the most gorgeous big brown eyes he’d ever seen. “I, um, understood that you were going to be here at two.”
He