"He calls me Chip now."
Fifteen minutes later, Ethan was on the phone to Cal. Without breaking the confidentiality of his conversation with Edward, he let his oldest brother know they had big trouble on their hands.
"Giving out any free samples, bro?"
Rachel's head lifted as a deep male voice came from the doorway of the snack shop.
"Cal!" Gabe dropped the carton of buns he'd been carrying and shot out from behind the counter to greet the man who looked so very much like him. As the two slapped each other on the back, Rachel studied Cal Bonner and wonder what combination of genes had landed three lady-killers in the same family.
Unlike Ethan, Cal and Gabe's dark coloring and rough-hewed good looks clearly identified them as brothers. Gabe's hair was longer, his silvery-gray eyes lighter than Cal's, but both men were tall, lean, and muscular. Although she knew the ex-quarterback was the elder brother by almost two years, he looked younger. Maybe it was the general air of contentment he seemed to carry with him like an invisible football.
"You should have let me know you were coming," Gabe said.
"You didn't think I'd miss the grand opening tonight, did you?"
"It's just a drive-in, Cal."
His words stung. It wasn't just a drive-in to her. She wanted this old place to shine tonight.
All day, she'd been busy training Kayla, the young woman Gabe had hired to help out in the snack shop. She'd also been teaching Gabe the rudiments so he could help out during intermission. He caught on quickly, but she knew he was merely going through the motions. He should be healing animals, not serving up fast-food nachos.
"Want some coffee?" Gabe asked his brother. "Or ice cream. I'm getting to be a pro at making cones."
"No, thanks. Rosie started kicking up right after we left Asheville—she hates her car seat worse than poison—and I need to get back to the mausoleum to give Jane a hand."
Rachel didn't have to think hard to figure out what the mausoleum was.
Cal went on, his manner a shade too hearty. "I just stopped by to tell you Jane's decided to have a family brunch for you and Eth tomorrow around eleven to celebrate your new business. Think you can make it?"
"Sure."
"And Gabe, don't tell Jane I mentioned this, but if I were you, I'd eat something first. Knowing my wife, we'll probably be getting wheat-germ muffins and tofu casserole. You should see the garbage she feeds Rosie—no sugar, no preservatives, nothing worth eating. Last week Jane caught me shaking out a few of my Lucky Charms on Rosie's high-chair tray, and she about took my head right off."
Gabe smiled. "I stand warned."
"This place looks terrific." Cal eyed the snack shop as if it were a four-star restaurant. "You sure have done a lot with it."
Rachel could barely conceal her disgust. He was as bad as Ethan. She might love this drive-in, but it was clearly wrong for Gabe. Why couldn't one of his brothers look him in the face and ask him exactly what he thought he was doing with his life?
For the first time, Cal noticed her. His smile faded before it had fully formed, and, even though they'd never met, she knew he'd figured out who she was.
"Rachel, this is my brother Cal. Cal, Rachel Stone."
Cal gave her a brusque nod. "Miz Snopes."
She smiled pleasantly. "Nice to meet you, Hal."
"It's Cal."
"Ah." She continued to smile.
Cal's mouth tightened, and she regretted her flippancy. This was clearly a man who thrived on battle, and she had thrown down the gauntlet.
After the incident with Cal, what was left of the afternoon went steadily downhill. Kayla dropped a huge jar of salsa, splattering it everywhere, one of the men setting up the fireworks display cut his hand badly enough to need stitches, and Gabe withdrew into himself. Later, when Rachel ran into town to pick up Edward, an old Chevy Lumina shot out from a side street and nearly hit her. As she laid on her horn, she glimpsed the hostile face of Bobby Dennis behind the wheel. Once again, she wondered how she could have sparked so much animosity in someone so young.
That night, Edward ran in and out of the snack shop as cars began to trickle into the lot. "I get to stay up as late as I want. Right, Mommy?"
"As late as you want." She smiled as she poured kernels into the popcorn machine. The fireworks display didn't start until dark, and she doubted if he'd stay awake for much of the goofy Jim Carrey crowd-pleaser that was the first feature.
A couple with several young children came through the door, their first customers, and she concentrated on helping Kayla fill the order. Not long after, a rowdy trio of teenagers walked in. One of them was Bobby Dennis.
Rachel was waiting on an elderly man and his wife, so Kayla took care of them, but before they left, Rachel made a point of speaking. "I hope you enjoy the movies tonight."
He glared at her as if she'd cursed at him.
She shrugged. Whatever grudge this boy had against her, he wasn't going to give it up easily.
They did a steady stream of business, although not as much as she'd anticipated, and when the fireworks began, she glanced outside to see that the lot was barely half full. Since there wasn't much to do in Salvation on a Friday night, she knew a lot of people in town were making it clear that Gabe had to pay the consequences for hiring her.
Edward fell asleep not long after the Carrey movie began. His protest when she awakened him was unconvincing. As he leaned against her side while she helped him up the metal stairs, uneasiness over what she was doing to Gabe combined with worry about her own future. Dwayne's Bible hadn't revealed a single clue, and she was beginning to lose hope that it would. Maybe Gabe was right and the money had gone down in the plane with Dwayne.
She looked at her sleepy son. Gabe was making an effort to get along better with him. He'd taught Edward how to feed Tweety Bird without damaging the bird's soft beak and taken him on a walk in the woods near the cave where the bats lived, but Gabe's heart wasn't in it, and the atmosphere in the cottage grew more strained each day. She knew she had to do something soon.
Tom, the projectionist, smiled as she made her way through the projection room and tucked Edward into the sleeping bag she'd placed on the floor of Gabe's office. A boisterous man with a slew of grandchildren, he'd promised to let Rachel know if Edward woke up.
As she descended the stairs, she saw Gabe coming out of the snack shop. At the same time, a man she dimly recognized, although she couldn't immediately recall his identity, stepped from the shadows. "Doesn't look like you've got a full house tonight, Bonner."
Gabe shrugged. "Can't have a full house every night."
"Especially with the Widow Snopes working for you."
Gabe seemed to stiffen. "Why don't you mind your own business, Scudder?"
"Whatever you say." With a sneer, he walked away.
Russ Scudder. He'd lost a lot of hair since Rachel had last seen him and some weight, too. She remembered a more muscular man.
Gabe looked up as she came the rest of the way down the steps. "Russ used to work security at the Temple," she said.
"I know. I hired him to help out here, but I had to fire him after a couple of weeks. He wasn't reliable."
"He's right about what's happened. We should have had a bigger crowd. You're being punished because of me."
"It doesn't matter."
She knew it didn't, not to him, and that bothered her as much as the empty spaces. It should matter. "I wonder why he came tonight?"
"Probably needed a dark place to get drunk."
He moved off toward a car of noisy teenagers, and she returned to the snack shop to get ready for intermission. He reappeared to help out just as the first feature came to an end.
A line formed, but not a long enough one to give them trouble. Both of Gabe's brothers appeared to pick up food. Cal ordered two of everything, so she gathered that his wife was back in the car with their baby.
Ethan ordered double, too, but since Kayla was waiting on him, Rachel didn't notice
. If she had, she might have been tempted to slip outside and see who he'd brought with him.
Chapter Eighteen
« ^ »
Ethan passed the tray of food to Kristy through the window of his car, then opened the door and slid behind the wheel. He immediately caught a hint of her perfume. Tonight it reminded him of black lace and a rumba, which was ridiculous because he'd never done a rumba in his life and didn't intend to.
He closed the car door. "They had those big chocolate-chip cookies, so I got a couple of them."
"That's fine." She spoke in the cool, polite voice she'd been using all evening, as if he were her boss, not her friend.
The tiny rings on her fingers glimmered from the floodlights that had been turned on for intermission. He watched anxiously as she set the food between them and unwrapped her hot dog. He'd put mustard on it because that was how he liked his hot dogs, but the truth was, he didn't have any idea whether she liked mustard. They'd eaten a couple of thousand lunches together over the past eight years, but he couldn't seem to remember what she'd eaten at any of them, except he thought he recalled some salads.
"They didn't have any salad."
She regarded him quizzically. "Of course they didn't."
He felt like an idiot. "I wasn't sure whether you'd rather have regular mustard or spicy brown." He waited. "They had both kinds."
"This is fine."
"Maybe you like ketchup better?"
"It doesn't matter."
"And relish. Did you want relish?" He set his own hot dog down. "I can go back and get some."
"That's not necessary."
"Really? Because I don't mind." He had the door half open when she stopped him.
"Ethan, I hate hot dogs!"
"Oh." He closed the door and sank back into the seat, feeling foolish and depressed. On the drive-in screen, a clock, accompanied by marching sodas, ticked away the intermission time. He felt as if it were marking off the minutes of his life.
"I love chocolate-chip cookies, though."
He shook his head. "I've proved everything you threw at me the night at the Mountaineer, haven't I? I don't know anything about you."
"You know that I don't like hot dogs," she said gently.
She could have been bitchy, but she was being nice. It was one of so many good things about her. Why had it taken him so long to notice? He'd gone through most of his life barely thinking about Kristy Brown, and now he couldn't think about anybody else.
She wrapped her hot dog back up, returned it to the bag, and picked up a chocolate-chip cookie. Before she took a bite, she opened a paper napkin and spread it over the lap of her jeans. The jeans, along with her plain white blouse, had disappointed him. He supposed she'd decided to save her short skirts and tight tops for Mike Reedy.
He pulled the paper off his straw and punched it through the lid covering his large Cherry Coke. "So, I hear you and Mike are seeing each other." He tried to sound casual, as if the topic were of no more interest to him than last week's weather.
"He's a very nice person."
"Yeah, I guess." Tendrils of silky dark hair curled around her cheeks. He wanted to brush them back, and, for a moment, he imagined doing it with his lips.
She gazed at him. "What?"
"Nothing."
"Say it." She sounded impatient. "I know when you have something on your mind."
"It's just—Mike's a great guy, don't get me wrong, but—In high school, he was a little—I don't know. Maybe a little wild or something." For someone who was a pro at public speaking, he was making a mess of this.
"Wild? Mike?"
"Not now." He was starting to sweat. "No, it's like I said, he's a great guy, but he can be a little… spacey. You know. Distractible."
"So?"
"So." His throat was dry, and he took a sip of Cherry Coke. "I just thought you should know."
"I should know that he's distractible?"
"Yes."
"All right. Thanks for telling me." She bit into one side of the chocolate-chip cookie. Neat. No crumbs dribbled over the upholstery. He realized how much he liked Kristy's orderliness. Not just because she made things easier for him, but because his own interior world was so often chaotic, and she calmed him.
He wasn't calm now, however. That black-lace rumba perfume was getting to him, along with her neat white blouse buttoned all the way to the neck. Even as he told himself to change the subject, he plunged in again. "I mean, if he's driving or something, he might get… You know."
"Distracted?"
"Yes."
She set the cookie on her napkin, those seductive little finger rings glimmering. "Okay, Ethan. What's this about? All evening you've been acting strange."
She was right, so he didn't know why he was suddenly so angry with her. "Me? You're the one who decided to show up wearing jeans!" Only after the words had left his mouth did he realize how inappropriate they were.
"You're wearing jeans, too," she pointed out patiently. "Granted, you ironed yours, and I didn't, but—"
"That's not the point, and you know it."
"No, I don't know it. What are you trying to say?" She added the cookie to their growing pile of discarded food.
"Did you wear jeans the last time you went on a date with Mike?"
"No."
"Then why are you wearing them with me?"
"Because this isn't a date?"
"It's Friday night, and we're parked in the next-to-last row of the Pride of Carolina! I'd say that's a date, wouldn't you?"
Her eyes snapped, no longer gentle at all. "Excuse me? Are you telling me that, after air these years, the great Ethan Bonner finally asked me out on a date, and I didn't even know it?"
"Well, that's not my fault, is it? And what do you mean, finally?"
He heard a long labored sigh before she spoke. "Just what is it you want from me?"
How could he answer that? Should he say, "I want your friendship," or "I want the body you've been hiding away all these years"? No, definitely not that. This was Kristy, for pete's sake. Maybe he should just tell her she had no right to keep changing around on him, and he wanted things back the way they were, but that wasn't true. At the moment, he only knew one thing. "I don't want you sleeping with Mike Reedy."
"Who said I was?"
The fake diamond studs flashed in her earlobes. She was mad at him. Well, fine, he was mad at her, too, so what difference did the truth make? "I looked in your purse this week. The condom you had in there is gone."
"You looked in my purse? Mr. Honest Ethan?"
The fact that she seemed confused, rather than angry, took some of the wind out of his sails. "I apologize. It won't ever happen again. I was just—" He set aside his Coke. "I was just worried about you. You shouldn't be sleeping with Mike Reedy."
"Then who should I be sleeping with?"
"No one!"
She got all stiff and starchy. "I'm sorry, Ethan, but that's no longer an option for me."
"I sleep alone. I don't see why you can't, too!"
"Because I can't, that's all, not any longer. At least you have a seedy past to look back on. I don't even have that."
"It wasn't seedy! Well, maybe it was, but—Just wait for the right man, Kristy. Don't give yourself away cheaply. When the right man comes along, you'll know it."
"Maybe I know it right now."
"Mike Reedy isn't the right man!"
"How do you know that? You can't even remember that I hate hot dogs. You don't know when my birthday is or my favorite singer. How would you know who the right man is for me?"
"Your birthday is April eleventh."
"Sixteenth."
"See! I knew it was in April!"
She arched one fine eyebrow at him, then took such a deep breath he suspected she was counting to ten. "I took the condom out of my purse because I felt stupid carrying it around."
"So you and Mike haven't…"
"Not yet. But we might. I really like him."
; "Like isn't good enough. You like me, too, but that doesn't mean you're going to have sex with me."
"Of course I'm not."
He felt a stab of disappointment. "Of course not."
"How could I? You're celibate."
Exactly what did she mean by that? That if he weren't celibate, she might consider it?
"And," she went on, "you're not attracted to me."
"That's not true. You're my—"
"Don't you say it!" Feathery tendrils flew and the fake diamond studs flashed. "Don't you dare say I'm your best friend, because I'm not!"
He felt as if she'd punched him. Much of his job involved counseling others. He understood the complexity of human behavior far more than most people, so why was he so clueless about her?
The clock on the screen ticked off its final minutes. He'd always been tenacious, but she'd somehow taken the fight out of him. He knew he was hurting her, even if he didn't understand exactly how, and the last thing he wanted was to hurt Kristy Brown.
"Kristy, what's happening to you?"
"Life is happening to me," she said softly. "Finally."
"What does that mean?"
Her silence lasted so long he didn't think she would answer, but she did. "It means I've finally stopped living in the past. I'm ready to move on with my life." She looked over at him in a way that made him think she was engaged in some internal struggle. "It means I'm not going to be in love with you anymore, Ethan."
He felt as if a jolt of electricity had passed right through him, except he didn't know why he should be shocked. At some unconscious level, he supposed he'd known she was in love with him, but he hadn't let himself think about it.
She gave a soft, self-deprecating laugh that made him ache. "I've been so pathetic. All that wasted time. For eight years I sat at my desk, Little Miss Efficiency, bustling around to find your car keys and make sure you had milk in the refrigerator, and you never even noticed. I had so little regard for myself."
He had no idea what to say.
"Do you know what's really ironic?" There was no bitterness in her voice. She spoke calmly, almost as if she were talking about someone else. "I would have been the perfect woman for you, but you never noticed. And now it's too late."
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