Axell had looked up the sister. She’d been busted for chronic possession and shoplifting a teddy bear, not the act of a hardened criminal. Still, selling drugs was usually the logical next step for an addict. He had to be cautious here, but he didn’t think a schoolteacher would condone the behavior of junkies, even if one was her sister.
“Besides, the artisans who designed the stuff in there deserve an outlet for their creativity and some reward for their work,” Maya continued. “Some of it would sell for a fortune in California. Cleo had a brilliant idea. She just didn’t know how to make it work.”
Axell sat back as the bartender set the teas in front of them. Crossing his arms on the wooden table, he studied his companion. He’d read her credentials. She had a Masters in childhood education, four years teaching experience, and an extremely high grade-point average at an excellent state university. He knew nothing of her prior life. He didn’t even know where the damned father of her child was. Maybe that was a starting point.
“Do you have any income other than the school?” he asked pointedly. “Child support, alimony?”
She shook her wavy curls, and the purple streak fell forward across her brow with a will of its own. Since she couldn’t reclaim her clothes, she wore the same outfit she’d worn the day before. Somehow, the outlandish gauzy pleats and silky shirt looked exotic and expensive, even though he knew damned well she’d bought them at some thrift store.
“Stephen and I aren’t married. We were more or less separated when I heard about Cleo...” She skipped over that part with a wave of her hand. “I didn’t even know for certain I was pregnant when I flew out here. He travels a lot. I’ve left messages, but he hasn’t any money. I can’t expect any help from that quarter. I can make it on my own,” she said defiantly, “I just need to get my stuff out of that building.”
“I’ve been through the Pfeiffer place.” He hadn’t blindly sent Constance to a school he knew nothing about. When it had opened, he’d had every aspect of it checked thoroughly, except the finances, which weren’t a matter of public record. He wondered if he ought to probe that angle further but decided against it. Selene Blackburn’s family had money. They would probably invest in anything to keep their rattle-brained daughter off the streets. “The upper story hasn’t been refurbished in decades. You don’t even have working plumbing up there. No heat, no air; it’s not fit for habitation.”
She stirred the sweet tea with her straw and watched the ice cubes swirl. “I’ve lived in worse. The plumbing downstairs is just fine. We can open the windows upstairs in the summer. By winter, maybe something better will come along.”
She’d lived in worse? Axell didn’t want to imagine it. Old man Pfieffer had pulled the upper story apart in the process of renovation, then lost interest after his wife died. Wallpaper hung in ragged strips. Plaster had been ripped from the lathes. Molding for the unfinished floors above the school lay in jagged lengths full of nails that invited tetanus. The mayor was probably right. The building should be demolished. He shook his head.
“You’re not thinking, Miss Alyssum,” he admonished. “You not only have a son, but an infant on the way. They can’t live like that.”
She shot him an angry look. “The name is Maya, Matty is my nephew, and my sister and I lived like that more times than I can count. Not everyone in this world was born with a silver spoon in their mouth.”
Back off, Axell. He retreated against the booth seat and signaled for more tea. Don’t provoke emotional outbursts, he reminded himself. Matty was her nephew. Cleo’s kid. Things were getting clearer now. He’d thought her a bit young to have two kids, but what did he know about how the other half lived? After all, he’d been born with a silver spoon in his mouth.
“Having lived like that, I’m sure you’d prefer Matty and your child to live otherwise.” Dumb, he realized as soon as he said it. Now he’d really raise her hackles. How in hell did one go about approaching this topic carefully? Already, his deficiencies were showing.
Maya’s brave smile faded, and she shrugged. “There are a lot of things I’d like. Not many of them are attainable. Kids don’t really notice their surroundings too much. What they notice is how much they’re loved. Just tell me what I have to do to get you to hire the inspector. I have no idea what one costs or how to go about hiring one. I just know I can’t afford him.”
Amazed at how easily she cut to the chase, Axell raised his glass in salute to her astuteness. She offered a wry grin and a lift of her glass in return. He admired a woman who could speak his language.
“My interest in all this is Constance. I don’t want you returning to California. I don’t know how you do it, but you’re bringing my daughter out of her shell. If you leave, she might regress and give my mother-in-law the means to pry her out of my hands. I’ll do whatever it takes to prevent that.”
He’d considered offering her a place in his home again, but the incident this morning had given him second thoughts on that. He didn’t need wide-eyed waifs in his kitchen at four in the morning. He didn’t need women giving birth on his kitchen floor. He had all he could handle already without adding the dangerous complications a female would bring — particularly after Constance’s revelations about the other women in his life. He’d never have any privacy. “I own the building next door to this one.”
Her head jerked up, her eyes widened, and she stared at him with an awakening hope and fascination that shot Axell’s hormones into overdrive. She was pregnant, dammit! She was little better than a helpless child. Just because she looked at him as if he’d handed her the moon didn’t mean he was free to lose control.
His libido never had listened to reason. That’s why he’d ended up married to Angela. He learned from his mistakes.
Shifting uncomfortably, Axell gulped his iced tea before continuing. “The last tenant left it in fairly reasonable condition. It’s not earning any money sitting there empty. Maybe we could make some kind of deal.”
“If we can get the inspector’s approval to move my stuff,” she reminded him. “What kind of a deal did you have in mind?”
Had she not been twenty-months pregnant, all kinds of possibilities would have danced through his lecherous mind. He’d always been a sucker for helpless women, and this one not only appealed to his wretched need to protect, but with that wisp of uncontrollable purple hair and huge, wounded eyes, she appealed to his baser instincts as well.
But her pregnancy ruled out all his low-minded thoughts, simplifying his answer. “You can move into the upstairs apartment, set up shop downstairs, and pay me a percentage of your gross every month. My only stipulation is that you be available to Constance as much as possible. Keep her with you as you do Matty while I work. Except on busy nights like Friday and Saturday, I try to get away from the bar around nine or ten. If she’s right next door, I might be able to get out to see her more often.”
Her eyes lit up like a child with a new toy as she contemplated his promises. He’d never seen anything like it. Grown women should be a damned sight more wary of men offering candy. This one just seemed to slip off into her own little dream world.
“We’ll have to move the counter. Do you think I could hire someone to help me dust all that stuff before we put it back out again? Could we go look at the building now? I want to tell Matty...”
She was already across the booth and almost out of her seat before Axell could help her. Had she not been so pregnant, she’d probably be out the door before he could get up. Like quicksilver, she shimmered and glided and disappeared before his eyes. He’d never seen anything like it. His front door closed after her before he could cross the restaurant.
Feeling considerably less burdened now that he had the problem with Constance solved, Axell loped after her, whistling a happy tune.
***
“This is marvelous! This is gorgeous.” Maya whirled around in the vast open space of the downstairs shop of the restored old building. “The light from here is heavenly.”
“The foot traffic outside is heavier and should draw more customers,” Axell added.
Ignoring him, Maya ran her fingers over the mahogany banister to the upstairs. “Someone treated this place with respect. There’s a much happier aura in here.”
“It’s called profit.” Axell examined the ceiling tile twelve feet above them. “Heating and cooling is a problem though.”
“There’s a ceiling fan. And look at the floor! If I could just have it waxed...” Seeing that Axell was counting pennies, Maya slipped up the stairs. She really shouldn’t take another place with stairs, but what choice did she have? The baby would come when it was ready. Ignoring a frisson of fear at her lack of preparation for that event, she peeked around the corner at the living quarters. She didn’t own a crib or baby clothes. She had no nesting instincts to rely on. So she ignored the future in favor of the present.
“Perfect,” she murmured happily as she glimpsed the upstairs. “Look at those windows! I could turn the front room into a gallery if we didn’t have to live here.” Wrinkling her nose at the thought of Cleo’s ugly plaid couch desecrating the marvelous airy space, Maya crossed the wide front room to look out on the street below.
“Streetcars used to go up and down that road on the half hour.”
She hadn’t heard Axell come up behind her, and she caught her breath at his sudden proximity. His square build seemed so solid and reassuring, she had to resist leaning into him. What would it be like having a man like him to lean on?
Boring, she reminded herself. Just because she was scratching the bottom of the barrel financially and longed for the security he represented didn’t mean she’d be happy with riches. She needed a man who understood her dreams, not a stiff Norse god who’d never had a dream in his life.
“Wouldn’t it be lovely to have one of those cute little trolley cars going up and down someday? Tourists love trolley cars, and this town would be ideal for an artists’ colony. With these huge old windows in most of the stores, we could have art galleries for paintings and pottery and textiles. There’s room for antique dealers specializing in the arts. Then in some of those larger places, someone could have flea market and craft items for the less wealthy. An ice cream parlor! Wouldn’t that be fabulous?”
“Would I have to serve artichoke hearts and radicchio?”
She heard the sarcasm and shrugged it off. “Men would love your place with the dark paneling and steaks and hearty fare. Someone else would have to open a tea room for the women. And a bakery! With traditional Southern desserts — mud pies!” She drooled of dream heaven. “There’s room for all kinds.”
“I’m glad to know there’s still room for me. In the meantime, don’t you think you ought to be putting together some kind of business plan? You can’t continue operating on a song and a prayer if you expect to make a profit.”
Maya wrinkled up her nose. “You and Selene sound just alike. Where’s the room for creativity in a business plan?” She turned and nearly bumped her nose into his chest. She looked upward but couldn’t read his bland expression.
Axell stepped backward, putting more distance between them. “I’m amazed Selene knows the definition of ‘business plan.’ Are you going to look at the rest of the place?”
“Selene has vision, which is more than I can say for most people,” Maya said pointedly, traipsing across the front room and aiming for the back.
“I don’t know a damned thing about art galleries,” he called after her, “except they can’t possibly be profitable. People have to eat and wear clothes. That’s where the money is. You’ll have a hell of a time finding a market for the inventory your sister left.”
“Admittedly, there are better places to sell enlightened art than this two-bit backwater, but the city is out there. We just have to reach it.” Maya peered out the back bedroom windows overlooking an alley. She’d prefer trees and grass, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. It was better than Cleo had before.
“The people here are more practical than the dilettantes in the city with more money than sense,” Axell argued from behind her.
“And beauty isn’t practical.” She carried her bulk to the narrow galley and shrugged off the comparison with Axell’s enormous state-of-the-art kitchen. Well, at least the place came furnished with a stove so she wouldn’t have to move that abomination from Cleo’s home.
“I didn’t say that,” he answered grumpily. “I just said you’ll have a hard time selling it out here.”
She was avoiding looking at him. She wasn’t much on self-analysis, but generally she didn’t avoid looking at people. She didn’t usually argue with them either. Maybe some of his distancing technique was rubbing off on her.
Reluctantly, Maya turned and caught Axell’s gaze. He seemed startled but this time refrained from backing away, although she saw the wariness behind his eyes.
“Well, I can’t sell groceries, and I’m not much of a cook, so I guess I’m stuck with Cleo’s inventory for now. I’ll just have to make it work.”
With this admission of her weaknesses, Axell crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back against the kitchen counter, master of all he surveyed. “I think in your own best interests, we need to form a partnership,” he announced.
Nine
Auntie Em: Hate you, hate Kansas. Taking the dog. Dorothy.
“She’s staying with you?” Katherine asked incredulously as she escaped the demands of hostess to take a break at the rear of the barroom where Axell surveyed the Saturday night crowd. He knew nearly everyone in this room and had no compelling need to make his presence known unless necessary. People didn’t expect it of him.
Axell eyed Headley at the far end of the room regaling some young ingénue with his war stories. Headley had never been in a war. Axell dipped his gaze back to Katherine who bristled with hostility, for what reason, he couldn’t imagine.
“If you mean Maya Alyssum, yes,” he stated calmly. “Unless we can rescue her things, she has nowhere else to go. If you’re concerned about the proprieties, you might mention that to the mayor. Once we retrieve her furniture, she can move next door.”
“You don’t get it, do you?” she asked bitterly. “You’re so damned blind, you can’t see beyond that bar over there. That woman is out to get her hooks in you, and you’re helping her shove them in.”
Axell raised his eyebrows at his hostess’s vehemence. “She’s a pregnant schoolteacher, Katherine, not a temptress. If anything, I’m making Constance deliriously happy by entertaining her. I believe they’re finger painting right now.”
He tried not to remember the happy chaos he’d left after supper — a pizza he’d provided because there was nothing in the refrigerator. Maya had spread thick layers of newspapers over the antique oak kitchen table, but he rather suspected the newspaper might be as bad as the water-logged fingerpainting sheets. His housekeeper would have hysterics. His kitchen would soon look like a war zone, given Matty’s penchant for red. But he’d left Constance laughing ecstatically, and the almost-forgotten sound decimated all objections. He knew his priorities. Constance was on the top of the list.
“You bought her clothes,” Katherine said accusingly, jerking him back to the present.
Axell caught the eye of a waitress and nodded toward a table where a patron had just spilled his drink. He returned his attention to Katherine’s nagging. He’d never thought her the type to nag.
“All their clothes are in the building the mayor had condemned,” he reminded her. “It’s not as if I supplied them with designer outfits. It was all I could do to persuade her to buy at Wal-Mart instead of the Goodwill store.”
Actually, he hadn’t persuaded her. Taking advantage of her habit of nonconfrontation, he’d simply driven to Wal-Mart instead of Goodwill. She’d speared him with her eyes, but looks couldn’t kill, and she hadn’t been able to say anything in front of the kids. Axell smiled remembering Matty happily accepting everything he chose for him. The teacher, on the other hand, had insisted she n
eeded only clean underwear and a shirt. Once he’d figured out her size, he’d bought her two new maternity dresses and a big sweater to keep her warm on these cool spring nights.
She’d insisting on writing him an IOU. He’d considered trashing it, but for whatever reason, he’d carefully folded it up and tucked it away in his wallet as a reminder of how far he’d come. The grand sum total of their purchases equaled what he paid to have his cars detailed once a month.
“She’s playing innocent,” Katherine fumed. “Just you wait. She’ll have you caught, hook, line, and sinker—if you don’t wake up soon.”
She flounced off to her duty of greeting customers, leaving Axell to consider her warning.
True, he’d always had a habit of helping those who couldn’t help themselves. Marrying Angela had probably been a result of that, but he’d been much, much younger then. Her parents had just divorced and moved away. She’d bombed out of college as a result and taken a job as waitress at the bar. His father had just died. One thing had led to another and she’d ended up pregnant. Marriage had seemed the best thing to do at the time. Now that he understood the complexities of the wedded state, he’d never make that mistake again. He wasn’t cut out for sharing his life. Angela had called him uptight and heartless, but he just didn’t see the need to expose his insides for all to see.
He didn’t think Maya Alyssum much interested in marriage either, or in him. He occasionally caught her looking at him as if he were some fascinating but particularly repellent bug. There were way too many differences between them to find a common ground. He figured he was safe.
From the schoolteacher, anyway. As he watched Mayor Ralph Arnold enter with the mayor’s mother and Sandra on his arms, Axell wasn’t at all certain he was safe in anything else that mattered. His mother-in-law and Ralph’s mother were old buddies, or biddies, he revised spitefully. Watching the three of them take a table was like watching the enemy occupying his turf.
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