Free Marrying Maddy by Kasey Michaels

home.
    He’d gone out for dinner the previous evening, as the limited staff he’d hired hadn’t yet arrived, and slept in his king-size bed after locating a set of deep green sheets from the bottom of one of the packing boxes.
    This morning, after drinking orange juice direct from the container, he’d gone on a hunt for a pair of swimming trunks, then gone out to the pool to swim a dozen laps.
    Now here he was, lazing in the sun, beads of water still clinging to him, a pair of designer sunglasses shading his eyes and, in general, feeling pretty damn smug.
    He could really get used to this. Life in the countryside, with birds chirping in the trees, flowers all around. So very different from the small Philadelphia row house he’d grown up in, light years away from his Philly condo that had all the bells and whistles, but not a single chirping bird outside his bedroom window.
    Pigeons, he’d decided, didn’t count.
    Such a long trip, all the way from South Philly to the classiest Allentown suburbs. His dad, who had taken a hike when he was two and never contacted him again until after the Newsweek cover—to hit him up for a loan—would never see this part of Joe’s life.
    His mother, who had died so suddenly three days after his nineteenth birthday, never could, even though Joe wished her here with all his heart.
    He’d worked for his mother, worked every day. In school. In odd jobs. Soaking up knowledge like a sponge, because his mother promised him that knowledge was his way out, his way “up.” And he’d earned his way. He’d unloaded fruit and vegetable trucks at Sal’s Grocery, delivered newspapers every morning. He had even run numbers for Jimmy Jumbo Ears Moscotti for about two weeks, until his mother had found out.
    Fifteen, and big for his age, his petite mother had jumped into the air in order to slap his face, tell him she hadn’t been scrubbing other people’s toilets for twenty years so that her only child could go flushhimself down one of them. His mother had always had a way with words….
    So he’d returned to his studies with a new determination; graduated top of his class of six hundred, earned a full scholarship to the University of Pennsylvania. His mother had lived to see his name on the dean’s list, but not to see him graduate.
    What a life. What mixed memories.
    And now this.
    He’d learned a lot in his twenty-seven years, most of it from his mother, plenty of it from his teachers and the rest from the gritty streets of South Philly. But he’d never quite gotten over the stigma of being poor in a world that values material wealth.
    So now he had it. All the money his hard work could bring him. More money than he’d expected or knew what to do with, truthfully. Enough money to tell himself that he was just as good as anyone else, maybe even better than some, and that, damn it, he deserved some happiness in his personal life.
    Except that happiness still eluded him, had left him standing on the Strip in Vegas with fifty bucks in his pocket; had made him feel, yet again, what it was like to be the poor boy from South Philly, the guy with more dreams than brains. The guy with only a shadowy vision of a better future, and still struggling with his absent father’s legacy of failure.
    Joe had told himself over and over, all through the years, that he was his mother’s son, not his father’s image. He’d told himself that until he’d actually begun to believe it.
    He’d told himself that even as he’d gone back to the hotel room to find Maddy’s suitcases gone.
    And then, mad at Maddy, mad at his dad, mad at the world, he’d gone off to prove it.
    The sharp spray of cold water hit his chest and face. “What in hell…? ” He pulled off his sunglasses, squinted up at the tall form standing over him.
    â€œIt’s a warm morning. I thought you could use some cooling