Authors: Isabel Sharpe

Tags: #Fiction, #Contemporary Women, #General

As Good as It Got (34 page)

“I gave each of you something you desperately needed. So don’t start acting as if I damaged you somehow. Ann, I helped you see how your marriage wasn’t what you thought.

Martha, I encouraged your spiritual power and showed you love was never a mistake. Cindy, I urged you to leave your husband and follow your heart. Dinah, I told you—”

“You
slept
with
all
of us.” Dinah gave him a look that put him on a level with dead amoebas.

“Not Martha. She—”

“Wouldn’t let you,” Martha finished for him.

“I have . . . ” He touched his heart. “ . . . an infinite capacity for love.”

Ann’s famous snort resonated. “You have a sexual addiction.”

“I bet you never even went to Thailand!” Dinah shouted.

“Or Paris,” Ann added. “Croissants? The Eiffel Tower?

Please.”

Cindy gasped. This was getting really low. Except that instead of defiant, Patrick started to look panicked, then angry.

Oh God. He hadn’t been to Thailand. Or Paris.

“I bet the gay lover never happened either.”

The women were starting to remind Cindy of wolves circling their prey before they moved in for the kill. She wasn’t sure if she would defend Patrick or not.

“University of Minnesota?” Even Martha managed to sound scornful. “Bet you’re not even in their books.”

“Listen, you self-righteous bitches, you think you have As Good As It Got

299

the world’s only problems? You come here to this pampered little camp and expect everyone to cater to you? Well I did my best, I offered each of you friendship. And I helped each of you. Right now, I have had one hell of a crappy day, and I don’t need you riding my ass on top of it. So just get in the boat and shut the hell up, or I’ll leave you here. Get it?”

Dinah scoffed loudly. Ann tossed her head and stuck her hands on her hips. Martha jerked as if he’d struck her, but when Cindy looked at her face, she was smiling a tiny secret smile. “We get it. Let’s get into the boat, ladies.”

“I’m not letting that horny bastard—”

Martha took Dinah’s arm. “Into the boat. How else will we get back?”

Ann and Dinah spluttered, but knew they were beat. Obviously, spending the night on the island was as appealing to them as it was to Cindy.

The women climbed into
Stronglady
. The horny bastard started to move up the beach to untie the boat.

“Wait, Patrick.” Martha grabbed Cindy’s arm and squeezed hard. “Cindy, weren’t you carrying a sweater when we arrived here?”

Cindy opened her mouth to say no, but caught the look on Martha’s face and understood what she wanted, even if she had no idea why. “Yes. I did. My yellow one. Uh, sorry.”

“It’s on the other side, where we ate.” Martha looked expectantly at Patrick, who rolled his eyes and threw up his hands.

“Christ. Fine. I’ll get it. Wait here.” He turned and stalked up the beach.

Cindy frowned at Martha. “Why did I need to leave a sweater on the ocean side?”

300 Isabel

Sharpe

“Dinah.” Martha smiled, eyes alight, magnetic and powerful. “Didn’t I hear you say that one of your husbands owned a speedboat?”

“That’s right. My third husband, Stanley.
Stanley’s Dinah
, he called her. He and I used to—”

“Get up there and drive us home.”

Dinah stared, probably equally as surprised by Martha’s tone as by what she was saying. “But Patrick is—”

“We know.” Ann laughed, gave Martha the thumbs-up and scrambled onto the bow. “Start her up. I’ll untie the rope.”

“Ha! I’m with you.” Dinah chuckled, shot out her arms, so her bracelets jangled, sat in the driver’s seat, turned on the boat, making the motor roar. “Ready?”

Behind them Patrick shouted. Cindy turned and saw him running toward the shore.

Ann finished untying the line and tossed it into the sea.

“Go. Now.”

“
Hasta la vista,
baby.” Dinah slammed the boat into gear and reversed hard. The boat backed up, Dinah turned expertly, and they roared away from Eagle Rock Island, away from Patrick, wading into the water after them, shouting and flipping them off with both hands.

Dinah let out a warrior whoop, which Ann echoed, fist raised into the wind, hair streaming back. Martha bellowed triumphant laughter. Cindy turned back from watching Patrick and worrying how he was going to make it back to camp. Ahead of them, the ocean was wide and free, the land toward which they were racing glowed in the sun, peaceful and welcoming.

She pumped her fist in the air, then both fists. When she got home to Milwaukee, she would have to make an extra As Good As It Got

301

effort to cultivate girlfriends, maybe join a group that had more of a social conscience than the country club, maybe work at a women’s shelter or . . . well, she didn’t know, but something that would let her feel part of something bigger than her marriage and her house and her husband’s world. To give her a better sense of herself without him, and find that thing she might be really good at.

Her excitement rose. Maybe she could work in a bookstore, or a coffee shop. Or a coffee shop in a bookstore. She could buy a cabin like Betsy’s up north in Wisconsin. Get a dog, a new Max, to love her unfailingly until death did them part. Start slowly, take baby steps toward independence until she was ready to be out on her own.

No matter what, she wasn’t going back to the way things were. None of them was.

Ann started to sing first, off key and thinly, but with spirit.

Dinah joined in, then Martha. Cindy stood to get closer to her cabin-mates and joined in as well, opening her throat and letting the song pour out.

I am woman!

About the Author

ISABEL SHARPE
was not born pen-in-hand like so many of her fellow authors. After she quit work in 1994 to stay home with her first-born son and nearly went out of her mind, she started writing.

Yes, she was the clichéd bored housewife writing romance, but it was either that cliché or seduce the mailman, and her mailman was unattractive. After more than twenty novels for Harlequin and the exciting new direction of women-focused stories for Avon Books, Isabel admits her new mailman is gorgeous, but she’s still happy with her choice.

Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

Also by Isabel Sharpe

Women on the Edge of a Nervous Breakthrough
Credits

Cover design by Laura Klynstra

Cover photograph by Masaaki Toyoura/Getty Images
Copyright

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

AS GOOD AS IT GOT. Copyright © 2008 by Muna Shehadi Sill. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Adobe Acrobat eBook Reader May 2008

ISBN 978-0-06-169294-9

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