by Nora Roberts
Cade released him, picked up the rest of his purchases, and strode out. He drove out of the lot, and to the first stop sign. There he simply sat, eyes closed, until the red wash of fury dulled.
He wasn’t sure which was worse, all but coming to blows with Clampett while the two of them were surrounded by posies, or having the seed rooting in his mind that his sister had let scum like Clampett put his hands on her.
Shoving the truck into first, he turned and headed over to Market. He found a spot half a block from Tory’s shop, just behind Dwight’s truck. Doing his best to smother his temper, he hauled the pots out, carried them down to set them outside the door.
He could hear the high whine of a skill saw before he walked inside.
The base of the counters was in place, and the first line of shelves set. She’d gone with pine, and had them clear-varnished. A smart choice, Cade thought. Simple and clean, they’d show off her wares instead of distracting from them. The floor was covered with tarp and tools, and the air smelled of sawdust and sweat.
“Hey, Cade.” Dwight walked over, skirting tools.
Cade gave Dwight’s blue and gold striped tie a tap. “Now, aren’t you pretty?”
“Had a meeting. Bunch of bankers.” As if just remembering it was over, Dwight reached up and loosened the knot in the tie. “Just came by to check on the job before I go into the office.”
“You’re making progress.”
“The client has definite ideas about what she wants and when she wants it.” Dwight rolled his eyes. “We’re here to accommodate, and let me tell you, she don’t give you an inch of wiggle room. That skinny little girl grew up to be one hardheaded businesswoman.”
“Where is she?”
“In the back.” Dwight nodded toward the closed door. “Stays out of the way, I’ll give her that. Stays out once she gets her way is more like it.”
Cade took another moment to scan the work-in-progress. “Her way looks good,” he decided.
“Gotta admit, it does. Listen, Cade …” Dwight shifted his feet. “Lissy’s got this friend.”
“No.”
“Well, Jesus, just hear me out.”
“I don’t have to. She’s got a friend, a single female friend who’d be just perfect for me. Why don’t I give this single female friend a call, or come on by and have dinner with this single female friend and y’all at the house, or meet for drinks?”
“Well, why don’t you? Lissy’s going to be on my back until you do.”
“Your wife, your back, your problem. Tell Lissy you just found out I’m gay or something.”
“Oh yeah, that’ll work.” The idea amused Dwight so much his laughter rolled up from the gut. “That’ll work just fine. Way things are, she’ll just start lining up men for you.”
“God almighty.” It wasn’t, Cade realized, out of the realm of possibility. “Then tell her I’m having a blazing, backstreet affair with someone.”
“Who?”
“Pick somebody,” Cade said, waving it off, and heading for the back-room door. “Just tell her no.” He knocked, then shoved inside without waiting for an answer.
Tory stood on a stepladder, replacing a fluorescent tube in the overhead light fixture.
“Here, let me do that.”
“I’ve got it. This is a tenant’s obligation, not the landlord’s.” It still grated, just a little, to realize he owned the building.
“I see they got the glass replaced on the front door.”
“Yes. Thank you.”
“Feels like they fixed the air-conditioning.”
“That’s right.”
“If you need to be pissed off at me today, you’re going to have to get in line. There’s quite a wait.”
He turned away, hands in pockets. She’d gone for metal shelves in here, he noted. Gray, ugly, sturdy, and practical. They were already jammed with cardboard boxes, and the boxes meticulously labeled by stock number.
She’d bought a desk, again sturdy and practical. A computer and a phone were already on it as was a neatly stacked pile of paperwork.
In ten days, she’d organized considerably. Not once had she asked for, or accepted, his help. He wished it didn’t irk him.
She was wearing black shorts, a gray T-shirt, and gray sneakers. He wished they didn’t appeal to him.
He turned back as she came down the ladder, took hold of it to fold up just as she did. “I’ll put it away for you.”
“I can do it.”
He tugged, so did she. “Goddamn it, Tory.”
The sudden hiss of temper, the dangerous flash in his eyes, had her stepping back, clasping her hands. He slapped the ladder together, shoved it into a small closet.
When he just stood there, his back to her, she felt a pang of guilt, and of sympathy. It was odd to realize she didn’t feel fear or trepidation as she usually did around angry men. “Sit down, Cade.”
“Why?”
“Because you look like you need to.” She walked over to where she’d hauled in a minifridge, found a bottle of Coke, twisted the top. “Here, cool off.”
“Thanks.” He dropped down on the chair at her desk, took a long swig from the bottle.
“Bad day?”
“I’ve had a score of better ones.”
Saying nothing, she opened her purse and found the cloisonné pillbox where she kept aspirin. When she offered him two, he lifted his brows.
She felt heat rise fast and dark to her cheeks. “I didn’t … It just shows, that’s all.”
“Appreciate it.” He popped the aspirin, sighed, rolled his shoulders. “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to make it some better by coming over here and sitting on my lap.”
“No, I wouldn’t.”
“Had to ask. How about dinner and a movie? No, don’t say no without even thinking about it,” he said before she could speak. “Just dinner and a movie. Hell, a pizza, a burger, something friendly. I promise not to ask you to marry me.”
“That’s a relief, but not much of an incentive.”
“Just think about it for five minutes.” He set the bottle on her desk, then rose. “Come on outside. I got something for you.”
“I haven’t finished in here.”
“Woman, do you have to argue about every damn thing? It wears me out.” To solve the problem, he took her hand, pulled her to the door and through.
She might have taken a stand, just on principle. But there were two carpenters in the shop, which meant two sets of eyes and ears. There would be less for them to talk about if she calmly stepped outside with Cade.
“I liked the look of these,” he began, gesturing toward the pots while he continued to pull her down the sidewalk to his truck. “If you don’t you can exchange them at Clampett’s. Same goes for these, I suppose.”
He stopped, took one flat out of the truck bed. “But I think they suit well enough.”
“Suit what?”
“You, your place. Consider them a kind of good luck gift, even though you have to pot them yourself.” He pushed the first flat into her hand, took out the second and the bag of soil.
She stood there, baffled and touched. She’d wanted flowers, she remembered, flowers in pots for the front of the shop. She’d thought of petunias, but these were prettier and every bit as friendly.
“This was kind of you. And thoughtful. Thank you.”
“Could you look at me?” He waited until she shifted her gaze, met his eyes. “You’re welcome. Where do you want them?”
“We’ll just set them out front. I’ll pot them.”
As they started up the sidewalk together, she gave him one sidelong glance. “Oh hell. You could come by around six. I wouldn’t mind the pizza. If we get through that all right, we can talk about the movie.”
“Fine.” He set the flowers and soil down in front of her display window. “I’ll be back.”
“Yes, I know,” she murmured when he strolled off.
8
Maybe people didn’t actually
die of boredom, Faith decided, but she didn’t know how the hell they lived with it, either.
When she’d been a child and complained she had nothing to do, the words had fallen on unsympathetic adult ears, and chores had been assigned. She’d hated chores nearly as much as she’d hated boredom. But some lessons are hard-learned.
“There’s nothing to do around here.” Faith lounged at the kitchen table, picking at a breakfast biscuit. It was after eleven, but she hadn’t bothered to dress. She wore the silk robe she’d bought on a trip to Savannah in April.
She was already bored with that, too.
“Everything’s the same around here, day after day, month after month. I swear, it’s a wonder every blessed one of us doesn’t run screaming into the night.”
“Got yourself a case of ennui, do you, Miss Faith?” Lilah’s rough-as-sandstone voice cruised over the French pronunciation. She used it partly because her grandmother had been Creole, but mostly because it just tickled her.
“Nothing ever happens around here. Every morning’s the same as the one before, and the whole day stretches out in a long thin line of more nothing.”
Lilah continued to scrub at the counter. The truth was, she’d had the kitchen tidied up for more than an hour, but she’d known Faith would wander in. She’d been lying in wait.
“I guess you’re hankering for some activity.” She sent Faith a soft look out of guileless brown eyes. As guile was something Lilah had in spades, this look had taken some practice.
But she knew her target. She’d looked after Miss Faith since the day the girl had been born—born, Lilah recalled with some affection, wailing and waving bunched fists at the world. Lilah herself had been part of the Lavelle household since her own twentieth year, when she’d been hired on to help with the cleaning while Mrs. Lavelle had been carrying Mr. Cade.
Her hair had been black then, instead of the salt-and-pepper it was now. Her hips had been a mite more narrow, but she hadn’t let herself go. She’d matured, she liked to think, into a fine figure of a woman.
Her skin was the color of the dark caramels she melted to coat apples every Halloween. She liked to set it off with a good strong red lipstick, and carried a tube in her apron pocket.
She’d never married. Not that she hadn’t had the opportunity. Lilah Jackson had had plenty of beaux in her day. And since her day was far from over, she still enjoyed getting herself gussied up to go on the town with a good-looking man.
But marrying one? Well, that was a different kettle.
She preferred things just as they were, and that meant having a man come calling at the door and escorting her where she liked to go. If he expected to escort her again, he’d best remember to bring along a nice box of chocolates or some posies, and open doors for her like a gentleman.
Marry one, and you spent your life picking up after him, watching him fart and scratch and God knew what while you sweated to make the paycheck stretch to keep body and soul together and buy a few pretty things of your own.
No, this way she had a fine house—as tell the truth and shame the devil, Beaux Reves was as much hers as anyone’s. She’d raised three babies, and grieved her heart sick over the lost one, and had, to her way of thinking, all the benefits of male companions without any of the problems.
She didn’t mind a good snuggle now and again, either. If the good Lord hadn’t meant for His children to snuggle, he wouldn’t have put the need for it inside them.
Now, Miss Faith, she mused, was just packed full of needs and had yet to figure out how to meet them without causing herself grief. That meant the girl was equally full of problems. Most of her own making. Some chicks, Lilah knew, just took longer to find their way around the barnyard.
“Maybe you could take yourself a nice long drive,” Lilah suggested.
“To where?” Faith sipped her coffee without interest. “Everything looks the same, any direction.”
Lilah took out her lipstick, touched it up in the chrome reflection of the toaster. “I know what perks me up when I got the blues. A good spurt of shopping.”
“I suppose.” Faith sighed and toyed with the idea of driving down to Charleston. “Nothing better to do.”
“That’s fine, then. You go on shopping and brighten up your spirits. Here’s the list.”
Faith blinked, then stared at the shopping list Lilah waved in front of her face. “Groceries? I’m not going shopping for groceries.”
“You got nothing better to do, and said so yourself. You make sure those tomatoes are ripe, you hear? And you get the floor cleaner I got written down. The TV commercial made me laugh, and that’s worth giving it a try.”
She turned back to the sink to rinse her dish rag and had to hold in a cackle at the way her girl’s mouth was hanging open. “Then you go on by the drugstore and get me some of my Oil of Olay, the kind in the jar, not the bottle. And the bath bubbles. The milk-and-honey ones. On the way back, you stop by the dry cleaners and pick up all the stuff I hauled down there last week, mostly yours anyway. God knows what you need with half a hundred silk blouses.”
Faith narrowed her eyes. “Anything else?” she said sweetly.
“It’s all written down there, plain as day. Give you something to do with your bored self for a couple hours. Now, go get some clothes on, it’s going on noon. Sinful, just sinful to be lazing around in your robe half the damn day. Go on, get.”
Lilah made shooing motions, then snatched up Faith’s plate and cup.
“I haven’t finished my breakfast.”
“I didn’t see you eating it. Picking and pouting’s what you were doing. Now, out of my kitchen, and make yourself useful for a change.”
Lilah folded her arms, angled her head, and stared. She had a way of staring that could wither the bravest soul. Faith shoved back from the table, sniffed, and stalked out. “I’ll be back when I’m back,” she called out.
With a shake of her head and a chuckle, Lilah finished off Faith’s coffee herself. “Some chicks, they just never learn who rules the roost.”
It had taken Wade three years and eighteen pups to convince Dottie Betrum to have her oversexed Lab-retriever mix spayed. The last litter of six were just weaned, and while their mama slept off the effects of the surgery, he gave each of the cheerfully barking puppies the necessary shots.
“I just can’t look at the needles, Wade. Makes me light-headed.”
“You don’t need to look, Mrs. Betrum. Why don’t you go on out and wait? We’ll be done here in just a few minutes.”
“Oh.” Her hands butterflied up to her cheeks, and her myopic eyes shone with distress behind the thick lenses of her glasses. “I feel like I should stay. Doesn’t seem right to just…” She trailed off when Wade slid the needle under fur.
“Maxine, take Mrs. Betrum on out to the waiting room.” He gave his assistant a quick wink. “I can handle this.”
Handle it better, he thought, as Maxine helped the staggering woman out of the room, without sweet, little old ladies fainting on the floor.
“Here you go, little guy.” Wade rubbed the puppy’s belly to soothe it and completed the inoculations. He weighed, scratched ears, checked for parasites, and filled out charts while yips and barks echoed off the walls.
Mrs. Betrum’s Sadie slept peacefully in postop, old Mr. Klingle’s cat, Silvester, hissed and squalled in his cage, and Speedy Petey, Progress Elementary’s third-grade hamster mascot, raced on his wheel, proving he was recovered from a mild bladder infection.
It was, for Dr. Wade Mooney, his own little paradise.
He finished up the last pup while the siblings tumbled over each other, tugged at his shoelaces, or piddled on the floor. Mrs. Betrum had assured him she’d found good homes for five of the puppies already. He had, as always, gently declined her offer to take one for himself.
But he had an idea just where the last of the lot could make his home.
“Doc Wade?” Maxine peeked back in.
“All done here. Let’s g
ather up the troops.”
“They’re so cute.” Her dark eyes danced. “I thought you were going to give in and take one of this batch.”
“Once you start, you’ll never stop.” But his dimples deepened as a pup wormed and wiggled in his hands.
“Wish I could take one.” Maxine picked up a puppy, cuddling while it licked her face with desperate love and speed.
She adored animals, which is why the opportunity to work for Doc Wade had been heaven-sent. There were already two dogs at home, and she knew better than to think she could talk her parents into indulging her with another.
She’d been born in the holler, and her parents had worked their fingers raw lifting themselves, their daughter, and their two young sons out of it. Money was still tight, she reminded herself, as she cuddled and pined for the puppy.
And money would stay tight awhile longer, she thought with a sigh. She was the first of her family to get into college, and every penny had to be saved.
“They’re so sweet, Doc Wade. But between work and school, I wouldn’t have time to give it enough attention.” She set the pup down again. “Besides the fact my daddy’d kill me.”
Wade only grinned. Maxine’s father adored her. “Classes going all right?”
She rolled her eyes. She was in her second year of college and time was as tight as money. If it hadn’t been for Doc Wade giving her the most flexible of hours and letting her study when things were quiet, she’d never have made it this far.
He was her hero, and she’d once had a wonderfully painful crush on him. Now she only hoped to one day be as good and clever a veterinarian as he was.
“Finals coming up. I got so much in my head it feels like it’s going to burst. I’ll take these babies out, Doc Wade.” She hefted the basket full of puppies. “What should I tell Miz Betrum about Sadie?”
“She can pick her up later this afternoon. Tell her around four. Oh, and ask her not to give that last pup away. I’ve got a line on someone.”
“Will do. Is it all right if I take lunch now? We’re clear for an hour, and I thought I’d go study some in the park.”
“Go ahead.” He turned to the sink to scrub his hands. “Take the full hour, Maxine. Let’s see how much more you can fit in that brain of yours.”