by Nancy Warren
CHAPTER SIX
“Hello, Mr. Elbart,” Emily said in her usual cheerful tone as they passed a tall older man with upright bearing and a neatly-trimmed mustache.
They were walking down Main Street on their way home, at Joe’s suggestion.
“Hello, young lady,” the man replied, with the polite smile of a stranger.
“I thought everybody in town knew you,” Joe said.
“Mr. Elbart does know me, but he doesn’t remember that he knows me. He had some kind of accident in the war. No short term memory.”
“Wow. That’s got to be tough.”
“Well, look on the bright side. He can hide his own Easter eggs. He can see the same movie down here at the theater every night and it’s always brand new.”
“And dining at Belle’s is always a fresh experience.”
“Exactly,” she said, pleased he was catching on.
“And I don’t suppose he’s a man to hold a grudge.”
For a man she’d pegged as an all-business workaholic, Joe had a surprisingly fun side. Well, not a side really. More like a tiny corner of his mind that remained rebel territory. She hoped the rebels were able to overtake more real estate in his over-regulated brain before he ended up missing all the fun in life. “In Beaverton people pretty much learn to make every setback an opportunity. You’d be amazed how good life can be when you’re not always in some kind of competition for more money, bigger houses and cars, fancier jobs.”
“Yeah, yeah. The joys of the simple life. I’ve heard it all before. You know, saying people are cured doesn’t make it so.”
“I know. But Dr. Beaver never treated serious mental illness. He wasn’t a psychiatrist and was very clear about that. The people he treated were different, eccentric, mildly delusional. You’d be amazed at his success in using healthy food, clean water and positive feedback to allow people to function in spite of being at the far end of normal.”
“You really think healthy food and clean air can cure a cr—eccentric?”
“Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.”
The glance he shot her suggested he’d been trying it for a day and the simple joys of Beaverton weren’t knocking him out.
She peeked into the Kew-T-Pye hair salon. When Edgar Kew, the barber in town, and Terrea Pye, the only stylist, had wed, they couldn’t resist. Terrea, under the mistaken impression she looked good in chartreuse, snipped away at Betsy Carmichael’s hair.
When Terrea glanced up, she waved. Betsy looked over and waved too, her cherubic face wreathed in happiness, her hair well on the way to its usual style.
“If you ever need a haircut while in Beaverton, let it grow,” Emily said in an aside to Joe. “Really. I don’t care if it grows so long it’s hanging in your eyes, it’s down your back. The wild man of Borneo look is better than what they’d do to you.”
Of course, he didn’t need her warning, all he had to do was watch. Luckily, Betsy had gorgeous, thick hair. “Poor Betsy. She’s been getting Old Lady Three for years.”
“Old Lady Three?”
“The Kew-T-Pye is the salon equivalent of a burger place. Combo One – that’s what Olive has. A permanent that leaves perfect rows of white sausages all over a person’s head. Betsy has combo three. Short at the back and sides, brushed back off her forehead.”
“Why do people come here if it’s no good??”
“It’s cheap, convenient, and no one wants to hurt their feelings.”
“You obviously don’t have your hair done here.”
“Thanks for noticing.” She bit her lip. “It’s kind of a guilty secret.” She darted a half-humorous glance at him.
“I’m not going to blab.”
“I pretend I do my own hair, but really I drive into Spokane to get it cut and styled.”
“It’s one of the first things I noticed about you,” he said, suddenly serious. “You have beautiful hair. Sexy.”
She felt suddenly breathless from the intense expression in his eyes.
“Thank you.” Because he looked as though he might say more, she suddenly sped her pace up. “I’ve kept you from your work for long enough.”
One good thing about The Shady Lady was that Joe got great reception on his cell phone. If he stood outside in the middle of the back garden.
“How’s it going down there?” Frank Gellman’s voice boomed over the cell.
The lawn was not as easy to pace as the hardwood floors in his office, he’d forgotten his sunglasses so he blinked like a mole with sunstroke every time his pacing turned him to face west and he didn’t like operating without at least a skeletal office. A desk, a decent lamp, Internet access. How hard was that?
“Fine,” he said, “fine. I viewed the property this morning. There’s potential there.”
“Eric’s got the mineral rights nearly nailed down. We’ll meet next week and--”
Joe damn near dropped the phone when he heard a God awful racket behind him and shouts of “Fire! Fire!”
“Frank,” he interrupted, “I’ve got to go. There’s a fire.”
Frank Gellman was still speaking when he broke the connection. His first thought was for Emily. She’d been in the kitchen last time he saw her. Didn’t most fires start in kitchens?
“Fire, fire!” the same voice came closer now, and it sounded like a middle-aged man yelling. Then his heart slammed against his ribs when he heard Emily take up the chant. He sprinted across the lawn toward the kitchen only to crash into her as she emerged from the kitchen door looking perfectly composed.
She gave him a big smile and then did the damnedest thing. She put a finger over her lips as in, don’t give away the secret.
Before he could demand an explanation, a man who looked near sixty sprinted into the garden, out of breath and red of face. He wore jeans and a plaid shirt with a white T-shirt showing underneath, and on his head he wore a kid’s red plastic firefighter’s hat.
“Thank goodness you got here in time,” Emily said, running forward. She dashed behind a rose bush and emerged with a green coil of garden hose with a water pistol thing at the end. She handed it to the guy in the plastic fireman’s hat.
“Don’t you worry, Emily, I’ll put out the fire,” he said, sounding important. “Move back, now.”
Emily grabbed Joe’s hand and pulled so they stepped back toward the kitchen door.
“Oh, look,” she said, pointing to a patch of weedy looking stuff. “I think it’s bad over there.” The nutbar with the hose obligingly doused the weeds that didn’t flame, smolder or smoke.
“My herbs needed some water, anyway,” Emily murmured.
“Right,” he said, as his pounding heart finally dropped back to normal. “And a sprinkler would be too dull.”
She smiled up at him, that sweet, sweet smile that made him wonder whether he’d soon be prancing about in a red plastic hat. “He doesn’t hurt anyone, and my garden gets watered regularly.”
He thought about that for a minute. “So, if I come roaring into your bedroom in the middle of the night and yell, ‘horny,’ will you put out my fire?”
She half rolled her eyes so she could look at him through her lashes. “Maybe.” Then, while he stood there with his libido hanging out along with his tongue, she waved cheerfully to the overgrown toddler. “Thanks Harold. Is it safe for me to go back inside now?”
“Sure thing. I’ll finish up out here.” And before Joe’s bemused gaze, he doffed his plastic fireman’s hat.
She disappeared back inside the kitchen and Joe followed. “What do you mean, maybe?”
The water was running in the sink and she was washing her hands. She glanced up. “I mean, maybe.”
“Last night you said no.”
“That was last night. Today I’m saying maybe.”
“I don’t know what I did to go from no to maybe. And I sure as hell don’t know how to get from maybe to yes.”
Her smile was the kind that caused men to go to war, make fools of themselves, an
d pledge to fight dragons. “But that’s what makes it interesting, don’t you think?”
No, he damn well did not think. He liked signals. Plain, clear, yes I like you fine and I’m single and feel like sex signals. Or No, I’m not interested, have a boyfriend, am in fact a lesbian, signals. Maybe didn’t cut it.
“I’m the only sane person in this whole crazy town!” he shouted, frustrated.
“Are you?” Emily replied, as unfazed by his yelling as she was by the lunatics who surrounded her. Well, she must be one of them if she was questioning his status as most sane person in Beaverton. “Let’s see. How many hours a week do you work?”
He felt thrown off balance by her odd question. “What’s that got to do with anything?”
“Answer the question, please.”
He tilted his head back a little so he could stare down his nose at her. It was a killer move for intimidating underlings, and it only made her open her eyes wider, waiting for his answer. “I don’t know how many hours a week I work. I don’t punch a time clock.”
“All right. We’ll guesstimate. You usually arrive in your office by…?”
“Seven-thirty, eight o’clock,” he said.
“Good. Do you take coffee breaks?”
“I’m not in a union shop.”
“Lunch then.”
“Sure.” He hesitated and added, “most days.”
“And what do you do on your lunch hour?”
“Eat.”
“Picnic in Central Park? Feed the ducks? Skateboard down Wall Street?”
“I meet people for lunch.”
“Ah. Do you.” She leaned back against the granite counter obviously enjoying herself. “What kind of people?”
“I can see where you’re going with this. Clients. I meet clients for lunch. So what?”
“So nothing. I’m just asking. And I think a business lunch with a client counts as work, don’t you?”
He shrugged, wondering why he should feel guilty for working hard. “I suppose.”
“All right. So you start at seven-thirty or eight o’clock, you don’t stop for coffee, meet clients for lunch, and you finish around…?”
“I don’t punch a clock. I told you.” It was usually dark, though, when he left the building. Come to think of it, it was usually dark when he started his working day. “I finish around seven. Eight.” Midnight. Sometimes he worked all night and snatched a couple of hours of sleep on the couch in his office. That happened often enough that he kept fresh clothes and a toiletry bag at work.
She nodded, as though he’d said exactly what she’d expected him to say. “So, you work between eleven and twelve and a half hours a day by your calculation. Who is the sane one, Joe? The man who believes he’s a fireman a few times a week and waters the garden which helps keep things growing or the man who never sees the sun?”
“You can’t get ahead by being lazy,” he said, and only after he’d heard the words echo around in his head did he recognize them as his father’s.
“Well, you’re ahead all right,” she announced cheerfully in the kind of tone she’d use if she were patting his cheek. “If life is a race, you should hit the finish line ahead of everybody.” She said it with the kind of ironic intonation that made him suspect her idea of a finish line was a pine box. And him in it.
Not pine, of course. If there was one thing all his hard work had provided him it was riches. He could afford an acre of marble mausoleum if he so desired.
Which gave the term cold comfort new meaning.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Joe studied the oil painting hanging over the fireplace. It showed an attractive woman of means from the turn of the century he’d guess. Her clothing looked rich but respectable, the expression in her eyes anything but.
“My great-great grandmother,” Emily said.
“She looks a little like you.”
“She was an incredible business woman,” Emily said, turning to follow his gaze. “She built this place in the late 1800s. Of course, it was a brothel, but it made her rich and she ended up marrying one of the town fathers. I’ve always suspected he got tired of paying to come here. She moved with her husband to a big fancy home in town and everyone turned a blind eye to the fact that she still ran The Shady Lady. It’s been passed down from daughter to daughter ever since. My grandmother was the madam here when Dr. Emmett Beaver came to town and built his sanitarium.”
“Did he disapprove and try to hound her out of business?”
She laughed. “Not at all. He wasn’t one of those prudish health nuts. He believed that sexual release is vital to human health. He was a bit of an eccentric genius, I think. He’d been trained as a medical doctor and specialized in the psychiatry of the day. He was also fascinated by electricity and from what I can understand, he put the two together. He had this theory that the human body runs on a series of circuits. So long as you don’t block a circuit or short it out, everything works smoothly.”
“Electricity, huh?”
“I know it’s a bit out there now, but back in his day he had a huge following. He believed the sexual system was particularly vulnerable to blockage and that of course could mess up everything else. So he encouraged the free flow of impulses leading to a natural release.”
“Orgasm.”
“Exactly. A lot of women suffered from what they used to call hysteria. He was one of the pioneers in using vibrators to treat their conditions.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“Not at all.”
“I knew that the first vibrators were used by doctors to cure hysteria. But here?”
“Isn’t it delicious?”
“And your great grandfather was one of those quacks.”
“He wasn’t a quack. He did a service to women who were never taught about their own pleasure. I like to believe that after they were treated by the doctors, they learned to treat themselves. Or help their husbands to pleasure them.”
“And now they show up in lipstick cases.”
Hard to believe Joe was standing in the parlor of a bed and breakfast inn having a conversation like this with the inn’s proprietor. Even more ludicrous was the fact that the conversation was turning him on. Although Emily could talk about home-canning tomatoes and that would turn him on too, he suspected.
“I feel something very electric whenever I touch you or kiss you.”
She drew in a quick breath and her face was suddenly vulnerable. Interesting. She could talk about sex and sexual theories but the minute theory became personal and he tried to put it into practice, she backed off. Her blue eyes clouded and her brows pulled together.
He stepped forward and pulled her against him so fast she didn’t have time to protest. Her heart tripped beneath her breasts, he could see it in the pulse at her throat. “Feel that current passing between us?”
“That’s not electricity,” she said, her voice suddenly breathless.
“What about this?” and he kissed her. Kissed her long and slowly, opening his mouth on hers so her lips parted, letting the amazing rush build. This didn’t happen with other women. He couldn’t decide if he was flirting with the forbidden in trying to seduce the innkeeper, or whether it was something about Emily and him together which he’d never found before. He sincerely hoped it was the former, because there was no future with this woman, not even in the short term. He’d be leaving soon and the very idea of asking her to leave Beaverton was ridiculous. He tried to picture her walking down Broadway on his arm and he felt – God, he felt a sense of calmness come over him, like she belonged on his arm and who the hell cared where that arm was so long as she was there?
Now that he’d startled himself as much as he had Emily, he pulled away slowly, leaving her looking dazed and stirred up.
“Oh,” he said, running his index finger over her moist lower lip, “I think he was onto something all right.”
“Maybe.”
“So, if the Shady Lady has been handed down from mother to daughter, w
hat happened to your mother?”
“Well, she was brought up strictly in the Beaver method. Whatever feels good is okay so long as you don’t hurt yourself or anyone else. She got the first part figured out fine, but once she discovered she was pregnant, she wasn’t interested in staying around and being a mother.”
She said it as though she were talking about someone else’s life. He didn’t hear any bitterness, but he felt a burning outrage on her behalf. “What did she do?”
“She left. She had me – named me Emily after Emmet and Louise -- and then went off to live her life her own way.”
He’d always assumed, from her name, that her mother was a country and western fan, but once more he’d guessed wrong. “But didn’t she inherit the Shady Lady?”
“No. Patrice left it to me. My mother didn’t want it. She became an exotic dancer and made quite a name for herself. She has a trick with badminton birdies.”
“I see.” And he did see. Somehow, this incredible young and sexy woman had ended up stuck looking after a bunch of antiques – both human and architectural. He was conscious of an urge to rescue her from this humdrum existence in Bedlam aka Beaverton.
“I’m the first woman in my family in five generations to stay out of the sex trade. I’m the black sheep.”
“So,” he said, stepping closer. “How respectable are you?”
There was a disturbing twinkle lurking deep in his eyes that urged her to throw caution to the winds and act as disreputably as any ancestor she’d ever had.
Maybe there was more of her Intimate Healing ancestors in her than she’d realized, for the minute Joe had told her about his problem with sleeping, she’d been drawn to help him. And not entirely for altruistic reasons. She had a problem of her own.
She’d been without sex for too long.
Heat built slowly as he came closer. Rules, she reminded herself, were made to be broken, even her own no sex with the guests rule. Beaverton was, after all, a live and let live town.
A love and let love place.
And then his cell phone rang and Joe the wonder businessman took over. As he headed for the garden, she swore to herself that never in her life would she let her cell phone become more important than her real life.