The Unfortunate Miss Fortunes

by Jennifer Crusie Eileen Dreyer Anne Stuart

  ‘I wouldn’t have taken any chances with you behind me.’ He met her eyes, straight on. ‘You were everything to me.’

  Kim sang, ‘You’ll never know how much I love you,’ and Mare sat back. ‘Well, I’m nothing to you now, so it doesn’t matter, does it?’

  He leaned forward, and Pauline came back to take their order.

  ‘Maxine says welcome back, and she saw this movie about Tuscany and wants to know if that’s where you are.’

  Mare scowled at her. ‘Since when do you ask questions for Maxine? You’ve had Maxine completely terrorized for years and now you’re her lackey?’

  Pauline grimaced. ‘It’s supposed to be this big secret, but Maxine bought the diner two days ago.’

  Mare’s annoyance vanished. ‘Oh, bad luck, Pauline.’

  ‘No shit,’ Pauline said. ‘You’re not going to believe this one: starting tonight, we’re serving martinis.’

  ‘No.’ Mare leaned closer. ‘How the hell did she get a liquor license that fast?’

  Pauline leaned in, too. ‘You got me. I’d say she was giving blow jobs, but I don’t think Ferris Tuttle over at the license bureau has a dick.’

  ‘Good point,’ Mare said.

  ‘Do you mind?’ Crash said to both of them.

  ‘So is that where you are?’ Pauline said to him. ‘Where Maxine said? Tuscany?’

  ‘Yes,’ Crash said.

  Pauline turned around and yelled, ‘That’s where he is, Maxine.’

  Over behind the counter, little dark-haired, rumpled Maxine gave him a thumbs-up, and Crash gave her a nod and turned back to Mare, looking as if he were thinking, This is why I left.

  ‘So,’ Pauline said. ‘What’ll it be?’

  Crash said, ‘Two hamburgers, one medium well, one medium rare, pickles on both, cheese on the medium well, fries, two Cokes, one diet, with water chasers. Wait fifteen minutes then bring a chocolate milkshake. Large.’

  ‘Hungry, are you?’ Mare smiled at Pauline. ‘I’ll have—’

  ‘I just ordered for you,’ Crash said, looking impatient.

  ‘That’s what we always got. Can we finish our conversation now?’

  ‘Well, I’ve changed,’ Mare said. ‘You leave a woman alone for five years, she’s gonna change.’ She smiled at Pauline again. ‘I’d like ketchup on the medium rare burger and a lemon slice in the Diet Coke and in the water, please. And make the shake a strawberry.’

  ‘I like chocolate,’ Crash said.

  ‘Then get your own,’ Mare said, and he ordered a chocolate shake.

  ‘Not much of a change,’ Pauline said to Mare.

  ‘Thank you,’ Mare said, and Pauline topped up Crash’s coffee cup and left.

  Crash picked up the sugar dispenser. ‘She’s right. Adding lemon doesn’t change the basic order. I still know you. And you are something to me, damn it. You’re—’

  ‘You do not know me,’ Mare said, staring at Crash’s coffee cup.

  ‘You ran five miles this morning and waved to Mother at the tattoo parlor,’ Crash said, getting ready to pour sugar into his coffee but keeping his eyes on her. ‘Then you came here and had orange juice and a doughnut for breakfast. Why are you making this so hard? Why do there have to be so many secrets and so many rules and why does everything have to be so damn hard?’

  ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’ Mare stared at the coffee cup until it sparked blue, and then she slid it over two inches as Crash glared at her and poured sugar onto the table where the cup had been.

  ‘And I know you. I’ll bet you five bucks that you’re wearing blue lace under that god-awful coverall. You always wore blue lace under anything butch.’ He grinned at her then, for the first time since he’d come back, and she lost her breath because she’d forgotten how his smile lit up his whole face.

  ‘I am not wearing blue lace,’ Mare lied, and tried to think of anything besides how good it felt to have him smiling across the table from her again. Like how easy it was to move things like muffins and coffee cups and how hard it was to move little things like sugar grains. She stared at the sugar and began to separate out grains, biting her lip as she concentrated.

  ‘I can see the lace.’ Crash put the sugar dispenser back. ‘Right there at the top of your zipper.’ He picked up his spoon, looked down for his cup and saw the pile of sugar instead, and said, ‘What the hell?’ as Mare looked down to see her zipper had slipped enough for a flash of blue lace to show at the top.

  It looked pretty good so she left it.

  ‘You peeked so that’s cheating,’ she said. ‘No bet. There are many new things about me.’

  Crash shook his head, cleaning up sugar as he spoke. ‘Nobody knows you like I do, Mare. I know you, the real you, the part that doesn’t change. There’s nobody else in the world like you. And I know because I’ve looked.’

  ‘Knew me, maybe,’ Mare said. ‘But not anymore. There’s a lot new about me, like . . .’ Her voice trailed off as she realized there wasn’t anything new if you didn’t count being able to move sugar granules. ‘I have a new tattoo,’ she lied, and watched with satisfaction as his eyebrows went up.

  ‘Where?’ he said, grinning, and the light in his eyes made her want to grin back at him. ‘Give me a map and a flashlight. I’ll find it.’

  Kim sang on in the background and Mare thought, Do not get sucked into him again, he left you, and said, ‘You’ll never know. So why did you come back?’

  ‘For you,’ he said, and she went very still. ‘I miss you, Mare. I’ve been everywhere and seen everything, but there’s nothing and nobody like you.’

  Mare took her hands off the table and put them in her lap. ‘Oh.’ Concentrate on the sugar. She tried to make the sugar swirl, thinking of each separate grain. It gave her a hell of a headache but that beat heartache any day. I love you so much. I never stopped loving you. I never will stop loving you.

  ‘I didn’t have anything when I was here.’ He pushed his coffee cup away to lean across the table to her. ‘I was just Crash the Loser who almost killed you on my bike on your prom night. But things are different now. I’ve got my own business in Italy. I was roaming around over there and I met this guy, he’s as nuts about bikes as I am, and Mare, the Italians, they really know motorcycles, they’re an art form over there, and this guy, Leo, he loves the old ones and he’s been restoring them and he showed me how.’ Mare nodded and Crash went on. ‘I’ve been working on this bike for you. It’s back in Italy, all done, ready to go. Here.’ He got out his wallet and took out a photograph and handed it to her.

  The bike was a thing of beauty, a moped on steroids, sleek and black with a baby blue tank and seat and piping.

  ‘It’s a Kreidler Florett,’ Crash said. ‘Built in 1964, 49cc, but it moves like you wouldn’t believe. Lightweight but fast, just like you. Took me a long time to find all the parts but it’s cherry now . . .’ His voice trailed off.

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ she said, trying to keep her voice flat.

  ‘The Florett is considered the best 50 cc bike ever made,’ he said, pulling back, clearing his throat. ‘It’s a real collector’s bike.’

  ‘I like the blue,’ Mare said.

  ‘It’s your color,’ he said.

  ‘And the logo thingy, that’s cool.’

  ‘That’s the Florett logo.’

  Mare nodded. ‘The seat looks like leather.’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘Baby-blue leather.’

  ‘Yep.’

  Mare nodded again. The bike was perfect. She handed the picture back to him, glad she had her sunglasses on. Her eyes were probably glowing.

  Crash put the picture back in his wallet. ‘The thing is, I have a business there. I just bought a house. And it’s beautiful there, you’d love it. I can just see you riding that bike through the hills, and the Italians, they’d love you. I can take care of you now, Mare.’ He swallowed and then took a deep breath. ‘I think we should try it again. I’ll do better this time. Come back wit
h me.’ He looked into her eyes, the blue depths of his aching with honesty. ‘We belong together. Come to Italy with me, Mare.’

  Yes, she thought, but she sat back and tried to be cool. ‘Just like that. Five years go by, you don’t call, you don’t write, and just like that it’s “Come to Italy with me.”‘ God, yes.

  I know’ He ducked his head a little. ‘I was going to try to take it slow, but we never did that.’ He looked at her, solid as ever. ‘We were always going ninety miles an hour, Mare.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s how we hit the trash can,’ Mare said, trying not to think, Italy. With Crash. She stared at the sugar dispenser, watching the granules inside start to stir. Italy. Where the sky was as blue as his eyes and he’d built a perfect bike just for her.

  ‘I know you need time to think about it,’ he said. ‘I have time. I don’t have to leave until Monday—’

  ‘Monday?’ The sugar dispenser rocked as Mare sat up, and she slapped her hand over it so Crash wouldn’t notice. ‘You think I can decide to just run off to another country with you in a weekend?’ She leaned forward, trying to make him understand. ‘I have a job here, I just got offered a great promotion, I’m on my way to the top, Crash. And by the way, have you met my sisters?’

  ‘You’re twenty-three,’ he said. ‘You can leave your sisters. I want to show you Italy. I can take care of you, Mare.’

  ‘You can’t.’ She took her hand off the sugar dispenser where the sugar granules were heaving on their own now, peppered with little blue sparks, probably because her heart was beating like crazy because she was leaning so close to him, kissing distance, and the excitement had to go somewhere. I can move that sugar with my mind. How are you going to deal with that?

  ‘I can,’ he said, leaning closer to her, too. ‘I love you, Mare.’

  She pulled back at that, and he leaned to follow her, into the space where she’d been, and then his nose twitched and he shivered hard, three times.

  ‘Crash?’ she said, alarmed.

  ‘Marry me,’ he said.

  Mare was the runner in the family, but Lizzie knew how to make tracks when she needed to, and the last thing she wanted was for a gorgeous, pissed-off, soaking wet wizard to catch up with her. She couldn’t believe she’d lost her temper enough to actually throw the water at him, and for half a moment she’d been paralyzed, half expecting him to dissolve into the floor like the Wicked Witch of the West. He’d just blinked at her as the soapy water landed, and she’d disappeared, racing out the front door before he could try any of his fancy tricks.

  The sky was cloudy with the approaching storm, and the wind was growing stronger as she made her way up the cliffs outside of town.

  She saw the huge oak first with nothing beneath it - no wet wizards lying in wait for her - and then she went into the stone circle, slightly out of breath, and started to climb up onto the great lump of boulder affectionately known as the Great Big Rock. Some ancient glacier had dragged it down, but now it was smooth and rounded by thousands of years of weather, and she reached the top of it easily enough, hunkering down, trying to catch her breath.

  Something was definitely wrong, and Dee must have been right to call for the vote this morning. She’d been a fool to abstain.

  She shoved her tangled hair out of her face, lifting her head to look down at the peaceful little town beneath her. No sign of any mysteriously colorful wizard searching for her -maybe his powers were like electricity and he’d shorted out. Maybe he’d given up . . .

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  She almost fell off the boulder, but he reached out his hand to catch her. Touching him was even worse, but she managed to regain her balance on the rock without it, turning to look at him, fighting the impulse to run once more.

  ‘You’re not wet,’ she said.

  He shook his head. He didn’t look the least bit ruffled -however he’d managed to follow her, it clearly hadn’t been at the same dead run. ‘I could see what you were going to do. It was easy enough to put up a barrier. I’m afraid your floor’s a mess.’

  She sighed. ‘My fault,’ she said. ‘It needed washing any­way. Why did you follow me?’

  ‘We haven’t finished. I’m sorry I insulted your choice of life partners. Clearly there’s no accounting for tastes.’

  ‘Clearly,’ she said. She’d underestimated him. Her parents could never have appeared as he had, crossing time and space with seemingly no effort. They’d been better at flashy tricks to delight their television audience, not real power. She was dealing with something more complicated than she’d even known existed, and she had to be careful not to lose her temper again. Which shouldn’t be hard - she never lost her temper. Except for today. With this man.

  ‘I really don’t want you here,’ she said in what she hoped was a reasonable voice. ‘How can I make you just go away and leave us alone? Go back to where you came from, wherever that is.’

  ‘Toledo.’

  ‘Toledo?’ she echoed. ‘As in Ohio?’ Somehow he didn’t strike her as the Midwestern type.

  ‘As in Spain.’

  She digested the information, ignoring the little pang of envy. She’d always wanted to go to Spain. ‘Listen, we have a comfortable life here, and we’re not bothering anyone. Can’t you just forget you ever found us?’

  He looked at her for a long moment. She would have thought being outside would have muted him, made him less formidable when she wasn’t trapped in a room with him. She was wrong. Even at the top of a mountain he was a disturbingly powerful presence. One she needed to get rid of, fast.

  He didn’t look like he was going to be easily swayed. ‘You want me to disappear from your life, forget you ever existed?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Fine. Then you do what I tell you and we’ll have a bargain.’

  She didn’t like making bargains with the devil, and Elric whoever-he-was was downright satanic. But she wasn’t sure she had much choice. And what are you going to tell me to do?’ she asked, wary.

  ‘Isn’t it obvious? I’m going to show you how to turn straw into gold.’

  She stared at him. ‘I thought we weren’t supposed to cross elemental boundaries. I thought you were going to stop me.’

  Elric shrugged, a sight beautiful to behold. ‘I have a feeling you’re going to anyway, so I might as well accept the fact and make certain you’re prepared for the rami­fications.’

  And what might those be?’

  ‘It won’t stay gold. But if you’re lucky it’ll stay that way long enough for you to cash it in and get out of here. Assuming that’s what you want to do. Somehow I can’t see the children of Phil and Fiona Fortune living in suburbia. They were a little more upscale.’

  ‘I’m not my parents,’ she said stiffly. ‘I have no intention of ripping people off, and I’m not interested in fame. I need to make money fairly’

  ‘And you think using magic spells is a fair way to make money? That’s one thing that never tends to work - if it did, the twenty richest people in the world would be ones with our kind of gifts. Personal gain is frowned upon, and it never works out well. Look what happened to your parents.’

  In fact, she didn’t know what happened to her parents, only that they’d died. Dee didn’t like her asking questions, and something had kept her from looking into it. She barely remembered those years in the limelight - she’d hated the attention from the media, the indifference of her parents. Their quest for fame and fortune had killed them - she knew that much. And she had no interest in following in their footsteps.

  Her motives, however, were pure. She needed the money for her sisters, but she wasn’t about to waste time with explanations. She wasn’t about to tell him anything more than he needed to know. He knew too much already. ‘Is there anything I can use to turn into gold that will stay that way?’

  ‘Some base metals. If you go about it the right way, and your intentions are pure. I’m just not sure I can teach you that much in the next three days.’

  ‘T
hree days?’ she said faintly. ‘You’re planning to stay in the area that long?’ She was horrified, though she wasn’t sure if it was because he was staying too long or leaving too soon.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m planning to stay in your house that long.’

  ‘Not if my sisters have anything to say about it. Dee doesn’t allow sleepovers.’

  ‘If Charles is any example, I can see why not. However, she isn’t going to know. I have no intention of letting her see me.’

  ‘Dee sees far too much,’ Lizzie said, glum.

  ‘This isn’t a case of a teenage girl trying to break curfew,’ Elric said. ‘Trust me.’

  That’s not going to happen anytime soon, she thought. ‘There isn’t an extra bedroom. There’s no place for you to sleep.’

  ‘Your bedroom will do.’

  ‘I only have one bed.’

  ‘We’ll take turns.’

  She stared at him, frustration bubbling up. She would have told him what he could take turns doing, but it wouldn’t have any effect and would only upset her stomach.

  ‘I don’t like you,’ she said in a sulky voice.

  Again that demoralizing smile. ‘Of course you do. That’s part of the problem.’ Before she could open her mouth to protest he went on, ‘Why don’t we go back to the house and you can show me what you’ve been working on, show me what you’ve learned so far? We can take it from there.’

  Back to the house that suddenly seemed way too small with him in it? She didn’t really have any choice. ‘Give me a minute,’ she said. ‘I’m not quite ready to hike back.’

  ‘No need,’ he said, and took her right hand in his before she could stop him.

  Colors everywhere, with the wind streaming through her hair, pulling it free of the pins she’d stuck into it to hold it in place. The smell of lilacs, a sea of pinkywhite dogwoods like a carpet beneath her, and she was back in their kitchen, ready to throw up.

  He was no longer holding her hand, a small mercy, and she couldn’t read anything in his dark, mesmerizing eyes. ‘You’ll get used to it,’ he said. ‘If you keep having problems, a little Dramamine will do wonders.’