Angels on Zebras, (Forever Friends, Book 4 of 4)

by Webb, Peggy

Joe made erotic little circles on her bare knee. She galloped toward the end of her story like a racehorse sprinting for the finish line at the Kentucky Derby.

  “We’d just endured a tedious workshop on sexual harassment at the workplace. Our company was going to be so politically correct that we couldn’t comment on each other’s clothes, let alone bodies. The moderators held up Claude’s recent comment to Donna the bookkeeper as an example of what not to say in the workplace.”

  “What was the comment?” Crash asked.

  “Hey, darling, you look great. Lost weight?”

  B. J. and Crash and Joe all began to talk at once. Maxie wished her brother-in-law hadn’t asked the question. Now she was trapped. And Joe had moved his hand to her upper thigh. The way he massaged her leg drove her mad.

  She had to get out of there.

  “To make an interminable story long.”

  Everybody laughed. Joe’s hand inched higher. He was dangerously close to discovering how hot and bothered he made her.

  “Claude looked at me, and I knew exactly what he was thinking. As we all piled out, he yelled across the room to me, ‘Hey, Maxie. You want to neck?’ ‘What time?’ I yelled. We both lost our jobs on the spot.”

  “It was a hot spot, indeed,” Joseph said. But before he could move his hand any higher, Maxie jumped up from the table as if the political-correctness police were chasing her.

  “End of story,” she said.

  “Hey, aren’t you staying for strawberry shortcake?” Crash said. “I made it.”

  “Sorry. I’ve got work to do. I’m on a job that I’m dying to finish.”

  “I’ll walk you to your car.” Joseph gripped her arm, knowing full well she wouldn’t make a fuss in front of B. J. and Crash.

  Maxie waited until they were in the front yard before she jerked out of his grip. Bending over, she snatched up two daffodils, but she was so mad she didn’t even sniff them.

  “What was that all about in there?” Holding the daffodils in a death grip, she shoved her hair away from her hot face. “We had an agreement.”

  “I was breaking the rules.”

  “Don’t do it again.”

  “Why? Because you didn’t like it, or because you liked it too much?”

  “I’m not going to stand in my own sister’s front yard and be interrogated by a lawyer.”

  She reached for the door handle, but Joe was quicker. Pinned between her little Beetle and his hot body, she had nowhere to turn.

  “Tell me, Maxie. Is that job you’re so anxious to finish, mine?”

  “Yes.”

  The way he studied her, you’d have thought she was on trial for beheading daffodils, or worse. She lifted her chin, daring him to comment. He was silent, watching her. If there was one thing Maxie couldn’t stand, it was pregnant silence, silence fraught with all sorts of unspoken sentiments and unresolved feelings.

  “Decorating is my business,” she said, still defiant. “It’s what I do for a living. If I don’t finish jobs on time, I don’t pay the rent. It’s that simple.”

  “Maxie... Maxie.” Joe’s voice was soft and chiding, as if she were a recalcitrant child.

  He gently pried her fist open.

  “You’re crushing the daffodils.”

  He straightened the stems, then placed the flowers in her open palm, tenderly, in the way of a man who loves a woman.

  Mesmerized, Maxie could do nothing but stand in the dark in her sister’s front yard and wish for things to be different. Joe closed her fingers over the daffodils, then leaned over and kissed her on the cheek.

  “ ‘Night, Maxie.”

  At his car he turned and smiled. “See you in my dreams,” he said, then drove off into the night.

  She stood in the yard watching until the taillights disappeared around the bend. Lifting the daffodils to her face, she inhaled. The scent of spring. The season of promise.

  “See you in mine, Joe,” she whispered.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Magic Maxie’s was chaos. Leopard velour curtains were draped over the sofa, a matching bedspread took up most of the space on the worktable, and an assortment of carved statues stood at attention around the room. Claude surveyed his surroundings with pursed lips, then stalked to the sink and jerked up the watering pot.

  “I watered those flowers yesterday,” Maxie said.

  Claude didn’t even glance her way but kept on pouring water into the pots.

  “I always water the flowers when I’m distressed. If they die, I’ll buy some more.”

  “Don’t tell me Mrs. Prescott wants everything done in burnt orange.”

  “It’s not Mrs. Prescott I’m distressed about. It’s you.”

  “All right. I admit I never should have taken on the Beauregard job. I wanted it done so fast, I was forced into buying retail instead of having things custom made. It was a foolhardy thing to do.”

  “You can be foolhardy till the cows come home, and I won’t blink an eye. What’s bothering me is this.”

  Claude jerked up one of the statues. Made of ebony, it was an African fertility God at full mast.

  “What do you think Joseph Beauregard is going to do when he sees this perched beside his bed?”

  “Maybe it will inspire him. Lord knows, he’s going to need inspiration of that kind if he continues to squire around half the eligible women in Tupelo.”

  Claude cocked his head to one side and studied the statue.

  “Well, honey, if that won’t inspire him, I don’t know what will. It’s fixing to inspire me, if you don’t take it out of here.”

  “I’ll have everything loaded up within an hour, Claude.”

  “Mrs. Prescott is not expecting me till eleven. I’ll help.” He started packing boxes. “Are you finishing today?”

  “Yes. And if my luck holds, I’ll be out of there by mid-afternoon.”

  “Before Joseph Beauregard gets home?”

  “I’m hoping.”

  “You’d better do some praying, too, Maxie. I wouldn’t want to be within a city block of his house when he sees all this.”

  o0o

  The intercom on Joseph’s desk buzzed.

  “It’s a message from Magic Maxie’s,” Jenny said.

  “Read it.”

  “Project complete. I left the key on the bedside table.”

  “Did she say when to meet her there?”

  “No, that was it.”

  “Nothing about the bill?”

  “Nothing. Will that be all, sir?”

  Joseph glanced at his watch. Three-thirty. Maxie hadn’t wasted any time finishing with him. That was all right with Joseph.

  Redecoration wasn’t what he’d had in mind when he’d hired her, but something far more meaningful, infinitely more exciting. The project was a symbol of the future, their future, together.

  He could no more predict the future than when he was engaged to Susan, but it didn’t matter anymore. He’d become addicted to surprise, and to the woman who provided it.

  “Reschedule my afternoon appointments, Jenny.”

  The house was quiet when Joseph let himself in. It was Hazel’s day off. Was Maxie upstairs waiting for him? Wild hope. Foolish fantasy.

  Nonetheless, he took the stairs two at a time. There was magic between them. He knew she felt it. He could hear it in her voice over the phone, he could see it in her eyes every time they met, he could read it in her body language.

  The door to his bedroom was closed. Joseph stood outside in the hallway, his imagination taking flight. He pictured the king-size bed, rid of its functional green cotton comforter and replaced with something lush and inviting, something that would be a perfect backdrop for the lush and inviting body of Maxie Corban.

  Music filtered through the door. A jazzy tune. He listened, his heart pumping double time. Was she in there dancing? Wearing a gold bustier? Her ripe breasts begging to be touched?

  He pushed open the door.

  “Maxie?” The blinds were drawn, the
lights off. Joseph stepped inside. “Maxie?”

  There was no sign of her except the music and the lingering fragrance of her perfume, an intoxicating blend of the sweet, the spicy, and the exotic.

  Joseph flipped on the lights... and froze. For an insane moment he thought he might be in the wrong house, or even on the wrong planet. What had once been a conservative bachelor’s bedroom was now a lothario’s lair. Fertility gods in full flower leered at him from every corner. Every lamp in the room sported a red-fringed shade. His bed looked like a jungle animal set to pounce, and a string of colored Christmas lights blinked at him from the headboard.

  Lest he miss any small detail, mirrors on the ceiling reflected every inch of tawdry splendor.

  A curtain of amber beads hung from where his bathroom door used to be.

  Joseph stalked across the room and parted the curtain. Thunderstruck, he took note of what Maxie had done.

  Mirrored shelves occupied one entire wall, and lined up with the precision of soldiers on review was an array of sex toys that would make Larry Flynt blush: whips and chains, handcuffs and dog collars, fishnet briefs and black lace garters, things that whirred and buzzed and pulsed, all with motors running.

  Joseph went into his bedroom and snatched his key from the bedside table. A note from Maxie was attached:

  “I thought you might like something in keeping with your new lifestyle. You have my personal guarantee that the room will do the trick Enjoy!”

  “That’s exactly what I plan to do, Maxie.”

  Attached to the note was a bill on Magic Maxie’s letterhead, “No Charge” written in bold red letters.

  He wadded the note and bill and crammed them into his pocket. As he stalked toward the door he remembered the name of the music wafting around his bedroom: it was “Hard Hearted Hannah,” Maxie’s strip music.

  o0o

  Claude was sitting on the sofa with his feet propped up, enjoying a cup of tea when he heard the bells over the shop door. They didn’t just tinkle, they clanged.

  “Good grief,” he said.

  He jerked his feet off the table as none other than Joseph Patrick Beauregard stormed in.

  “Where’s Maxie?”

  “Where are your manners? Whatever happened to, ‘Hello, Claude. How are you today?’“

  “Wild animals don’t have manners. Where’s Maxie?”

  “She’s not here.”

  “I can see that. I want to know where she is.”

  “I suppose you’ve checked her house?”

  “She’s not there. Where is she?”

  “Why should I tell you? You look like a raging bull.”

  “I’ll give you one good reason, and I’m only going to say this once: Maxie left a bill, and I intend to give her everything she has coming.”

  o0o

  Every time Maxie went through what she called her shrinking violet stage, she took refuge in The Pottery Shed. Located ten miles from Tupelo, it was managed by Kelly Rumhouser, a late-blooming artist who had discovered her talent after being ditched by a trucker from Alabama who had fallen in love with long distances... and a little waitress at Denny’s Truck Stop in Mobile.

  A couple of years back Maxie had taken a six-week course in pottery making, and for a small monthly fee she could continue to use the studio at her leisure to work on whatever project suited her fancy.

  Cheerful chaos was the best way to describe Kelly’s place. Kelly was always up to her elbows in children, pets, and clay. Her three preschoolers and their two dogs had the run of the place. They raced among the pots and platters and vases without breaking a thing.

  The Blanchard sisters, both retired schoolteachers, sat at two wheels in the back of the studio arguing whether they should exhibit at the next Gum Tree Arts Festival. Eula said they weren’t ready, and Tula said they’d be dead before Eula could make up her mind to take the brave step of exhibiting.

  Maxie welcomed the chaos. She took a lump of clay from the freezer and plopped it on the wheel.

  “I’m never going to have another relationship,” she said as she pounded a lump of wet clay into submission. Kelly, a model of serenity in the midst of bedlam, merely murmured an assent as she turned a lump of clay into a delicate ballerina.

  Eula and Tula perked up. They weren’t one bit shy about shameless eavesdropping.

  “Relationships are messy,” Maxie said. She guided her clay crookedly, and her wheel began to wobble. Smashing the pieces flat, she started over.

  “From now on I’m going to be a shrinking violet,” she said. “I’m going to stay at home with a good book. I’m going to learn to cook gourmet food. I might even get a cat.”

  “Every old maid I know has a cat,” Kelly said.

  Maxie’s wheel stopped. “What did you say?”

  “You said you were going to get a cat. I said every old maid has one.”

  “That’s right,” Eula chimed in. “Mine’s a handsome Persian, but Tula prefers Siamese.”

  “I’m not sure I’m planning anything that drastic.”

  “You said you were going to be a wallflower.” Kelly dipped her hands into a nearby pail of water, then began shaping and molding. “Joyce next door has a calico cat with six kittens. She’d probably let you have one. I can call her and find out.”

  “We got ours in Memphis,” Tula said. “Finest stock in the South. I can give you the name of the breeder.”

  “Cat pillows are on sale at Wal-Mart,” Eula added. “I saw them yesterday when I went for Mr. Prince’s catnip.”

  Maxie had a sudden vision of herself six years from now, sitting in a rocking chair with a lap robe over her knees and a cat in her lap, watching a phone that never rang.

  “I’m not sure I’m ready for a cat just yet.” She bent over her wheel and tried to wipe everything from her mind except the way the clay felt under her hands, soft and wet and malleable. She would make a teapot, then fire it and use one of the bright red glazes. Tomorrow after she’d decorated for baby Joe’s party, she would drive out to her grandparents’ farm and pick daffodils. Though both grandparents had been dead for years now, she and B. J. used the farm as a retreat. Going there was like stepping back in time. Daffodils covered the hillsides, multiplying each year so that every time Maxie went there she was surprised by a new patch of bright yellow blossoms.

  She would lie in the pasture among the yellow flowers and look up at the sky and think of a million things, all totally unrelated to a certain man with a seductive voice and a way of looking at her that turned her world upside down.

  When the door swung open, she never even looked up.

  “Can I help you, sir?” Kelly said.

  “No, thank you. I see exactly what I want.”

  Maxie jerked upright and stared straight at Joseph Patrick Beauregard. One look at his face told her that he’d seen his house. If she were Dorothy, she would close her eyes, click her heels, and wish herself back to Kansas, but she was not in a Wizard of Oz fantasy: She was in Tupelo, Mississippi, with a man bent on revenge, and it was time to face the music.

  Joseph plowed toward her like a runaway steam engine. Maxie stiffened her spine, lifted her chin, and stood her ground.

  “As you can see, I’m very busy.” Joseph didn’t say a word, he just kept coming. Maxie’s wheel never stopped turning, but her fingers sank into the sides of her clay pot. “If I were you, I wouldn’t come any closer. You’re liable to get your suit dirty.”

  “Before this is over, lots of things are liable to get dirty.”

  He was beside her now, as forbidding as the Rockies with a winter storm brewing. This was a side of Joseph she’d never seen.

  Maxie wet her lips with the end of her tongue. “Before what is over?”

  “This.”

  In one swift movement he plucked her from her place behind the pottery wheel. Bits of wet clay flew in every direction. With no more effort than it would take to lift a small child, Joseph tossed her over his shoulder. Her breath whooshed out. />
  “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “Relax, Maxie. I know exactly what I’m doing.”

  “Put me down this instant, you blackguard.” She’d never been forced to talk upside down before, and she found herself addressing his coattails. She hammered her fists on his back for emphasis, but he kept right on walking. “Joseph Patrick Beauregard, if you don’t stop, there’s going to be hell to pay.”

  “There’s going to be hell to pay, all right.”

  With that declaration, he marched toward the front door. Kelly and the sisters looked on, stunned.

  “Don’t worry, ladies,” Joseph said. “Maxie and I often play games together.”

  Kelly recovered enough to find her voice. “Do you, Maxie?”

  “No. Call nine one one.”

  “She’s such a kidder.” Joseph patted her bottom. “We’re practically family.”

  “This is kidnapping,” Maxie said, pounding her fists on his back once more. She might as well have been a gnat swatting at an elephant. “I’m going to scream bloody murder if you don’t put me down this instant.”

  “Such a bad example to set for our nephew. Have you no shame?”

  Kelly looked uncertain. Holding Maxie fast with one arm, Joseph flipped a business card on her desk.

  “I don’t mean to alarm you. If you like, I’ll wait here while you call this number. My secretaries can answer any questions you might have.”

  Kelly glanced from the card in her hand to the man in her shop. Romantic from the top of her head to the tip of her toes, she loved nothing more than a good drama. Most of the time she only got it from television, but today it was happening right in her shop.

  “That won’t be necessary,” she said.

  Maxie tried to glare daggers at her, but being upside down she could only glare at the back of Joe’s pants. She waited until she was outside to turn loose her full fury.

  “How dare you treat me like this, and in a public place. The sisters are horrible gossips. By now I’ll bet half the town knows what you’ve done to me.”

  “Maxie, they don’t have a clue.”

  His Lincoln waited at the curb. Joseph jerked open the door and stuffed her inside.

  “Don’t even think about trying to get out,” he said, his face so close to hers that she could see the beginning of a beard’s shadow already forming.