“Has she had breakfast yet?” Pamela asked Birdie, speaking in a whisper even though the child seemed totally oblivious to the two women spying on her through the window.
“She ate.” Birdie eyed Pamela speculatively. “You and Joe, everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine,” Pamela lied, wondering whether as a Boo Doo Chief Birdie could read her mind. “Thanks for keeping Lizard overnight.”
“Lizard and I, we’re pals. You want tea?”
“No, thanks.” Pamela took a minute to survey the room where Lizard was playing with the pink dough. On the far end of the room was another door, leading to another room. “This is an unusual house,” she said tactfully.
Birdie shrugged, her voluminous dress billowing in an aftershock. “Joe.”
“Joe?”
“He put it together.”
“He did?” Pamela glanced up at the beamed ceiling, the two rickety steps leading from the kitchen into another hallway, the plank floor and luridly painted cabinets. “It’s awfully eclectic.”
Birdie’s dark eyes narrowed on Pamela. They were perfect for someone named Birdie—sharp, omniscient, leaving Pamela with the impression that she was being observed from above, even though Birdie was in fact shorter than her. If Birdie were truly a bird, she would be a hawk, or perhaps something colorfully exotic, like a mina. Certainly not a cute little hummingbird or a domesticated blue parakeet.
“Eclectic,” the older woman enunciated slowly. “I don’t know what that means. I know awful.”
“I didn’t say your house was awful,” Pamela clarified. And really, it wasn’t. Just strange, with rooms tacked on here and there, floors on different levels and misplaced windows. There was something phantasmagorical about the place, as if it were a carnival fun house.
Birdie shrugged again. “It is awful. But me, I don’t care.”
“It’s not awful,” Pamela argued. As an architect, she viewed a building like this not as a disaster but as a challenge, a puzzle to be solved. “Did Joe really build it?”
“No. He put it together. He fixes it. Used to be, it was falling down. He propped and patched and painted. A good man, that husband of yours. You take good care of him.”
“I’ll certainly try.” Refusing to dwell on the subject of her wifely duties to that good husband of hers, Pamela returned her attention to the house. “Mind if I look around?”
“Sure, you look around. Just don’t step on the animals.”
Pamela wasn’t sure she wanted to know what sort of pets a woman like Birdie would keep. Spiders for her voodoo activities? Lambs for ritual slaughter? Snakes so Lizard would have some of her own species to cavort with?
Moving cautiously, Pamela left the kitchen for the crooked hallway. The floor dipped in one part, apparently following the contours of the earth beneath it. The hall veered ninety degrees and ended in a small, trapezoid-shaped sitting room which a small army of cats currently occupied. On the other side of the sitting room, a door led to a bedroom with a cot against one wall and an abundance of toys on the floor. Lizard’s room, Pamela guessed.
Turning, she found Birdie lurking behind her, a tiger-striped kitten cupped in her palm and her hard, dark eyes observing Pamela. Her face was ageless, but her hands showed the ravages of time, her fingers bony and her knuckles knobby. The kitten didn’t seem to mind; it curled contentedly in her palm and closed its eyes as Birdie scratched behind its ears.
“I don’t know if you were aware of it,” Pamela said, watching Birdie as intently as Birdie watched her, “but I’m an architect.”
“Legos,” Birdie confirmed. “Lizard told me.”
“Actually—” Pamela smiled “—I don’t work with Legos. I build buildings. More precisely, I design them. But I do know a bit about construction. I’m just thinking...” She weighed the older woman’s silence, wondering if what she was about to propose would offend her. “Your house has an awful lot of potential.”
“Potential I don’t understand. Awful, I know that word.”
Pamela swallowed a laugh. “Potential means, well, something like raw ingredients. A house like this... If you opened a few walls, widened the hallways, brought more natural light into the rooms—it would really brighten the place up. And instead of all these tiny cubicles, you’d have wide-open spaces, with flow and cross ventilation and sunlight and...” She faltered, unable to interpret Birdie’s opaque expression. “What I’m trying to say,” she concluded humbly, “is that it’s a wonderful house, an architect’s dream.”
“You dream of a house like this?” Birdie snorted. Even the kitten in her hand seemed to snort.
“Well, not exactly, but...” The woman’s toothy grin heartened Pamela. “It’s just that I’ve always had a career, but now I’m married and living here in Key West, and I’m wondering what I’m going to do with my time while Joe’s at the bar and Lizard is with you. What I’m thinking is, I could renovate your house.”
Birdie frowned. “Why?”
“To make it brighter and easier for you to live in,” Pamela explained. “I could do that for you, if you’d like.” Please, she implored silently. Please let me do this. For me if not for you. She needed something to keep her busy. If she didn’t come up with an activity to absorb her time and energy, she would wind up spending that time and energy on Jonas Brenner. If she didn’t work, thoughts of Joe would take over, fantasies of him, memories of his mouth on hers. Nature abhorred a vacuum, and if she didn’t find something to fill the vacuum, Jonas and his wild little niece were going to fill it.
And once they did, Pamela would be in big trouble.
How much safer to pursue a project—and Birdie’s house was ideal. Pamela could simplify the maze of rooms, make the space more efficient and cheerful, and have something other than Joe to think about. That the work would benefit Pamela was clear, but it would benefit Birdie, too. The woman was getting on in years. Her hands were already arthritic; her hips couldn’t be far behind. How was she going to navigate all the uneven hallways and steps in another decade?
“I’d do it for free,” Pamela added. “How about if I just draw up some sketches and you can look them over and tell me what you think.”
Birdie chuckled and shook her head. “I like you, Pamela,” she declared. “Another crazy bird, that’s you. No wonder Joe loves you.”
Pamela was too diplomatic to correct Birdie’s misperception of their marriage. “I don’t think I’m such a crazy bird,” she said amiably.
“Oh, yes.” Birdie appraised her, then nodded. “A loon, maybe.”
“Joe said I was a swan,” Pamela murmured, although she had to admit he’d said that a long time ago. After her behavior last night, he probably thought she was a chicken.
“Another crazy bird, like me, like Lizard. like Joe. You want to fix my house, be my guest. Joe is always fixing it, and now you’re fixing it. You and he, you’re two of a kind.”
“I’m not so sure of that,” Pamela said quickly. She didn’t want to think of herself and Joe as being two of anything.
Again Birdie’s eyes took on an annoyingly wise look. “Oh, yes. Two of a kind, you and Joe. Birds of a feather.”
Birdbrains, is more like it, Pamela thought. “We’re really not that much alike—”
“If it makes you happy to fix my house, go ahead.” Birdie tossed the kitten onto an old armchair with clawed, frayed upholstery and left the room, Pamela at her heels. “For myself, I don’t care. But if you’re happy, you’ll make Joe happy, and then Lizard will be happy. And that I care about. So make yourself happy, and then everyone else will be happy.” They had reached the enclosed porch, where Lizard hunched over the table, shaping her dough into gooey pink balls and then flattening them into pancakes with her fist. “Maybe Lizard can help you. She’s good with Legos.”
“She’ll want to paint the whole house pink,” Pamela warned.
“I don’t want the outside pink,” Birdie said.
“I may not have to touch the outsid
e. I’ll just tear down some inner walls...” She gazed around her, smiling at the prospect of digging in and making something out of the ramshackle house. “I won’t do anything without your approval. I’ll scribble some ideas on paper, and then—”
Birdie fluttered her hand through the air, waving away an explanation she obviously didn’t wish to hear. She’d already said she thought Pamela was crazy. “You do what you must do—as long as you make Joe happy. He’s a good man, your husband.”
Pamela’s smile grew forced. She was supposed to be pretending her marriage was real, so she really shouldn’t get all huffy and defensive when someone commented that she and Joe made a nice couple. If she could fool Birdie into thinking she and Joe were alike, maybe they would be able to convince the social workers and the family court judge.
But it was hard to pretend, hard to smile and nod. The problem with Birdie’s comments was that they carried too much truth. No amount of hammering and tearing and replastering, no reconfiguration of rooms, no opening and brightening and ventilating was going to alter the fact that Joe was Pamela’s husband and he was a good man, and judging by her behavior last night Pamela was a lousy wife, failing to make him happy. Jonas Brenner had taken her as his bride and saved her life. He deserved better.
Well, she would do what she could. She would change her name, change her driver’s license and social security data, and be as much of a mother figure to Lizard as possible. She would act like a proper, stable wife and convince everyone that Lizard belonged with her Uncle Joe.
Pamela could do that much for him. She would try her best, within reason, to fool the world into believing she and Joe were two of a kind.
***
HE WANTED TO CLEAR out of the house before she got back with Lizard, but he couldn’t. He had promised to leave the front door unlocked for her, and he couldn’t very well take off while the house was unlocked. Not that he had much to steal, not that he didn’t trust his neighbors, but Key West had been built by pirates, and it was chronically overrun by mainlanders. People were wise to lock up behind themselves.
He held the spare key in his palm, flipping it over, tracing the notches and ridges with his thumb. There were commitments and there were commitments. For some reason, giving a woman the key to his home seemed like more of a commitment than marrying her.
That was a stupid thought. Pam was his wife, for crying out loud. Lizard’s aunt by marriage. One half of the pretty little domestic scene he was going to present to the court. He had to give her a key to the house that, at least for the sake of appearances, was hers as much as his. He’d given her a ring, hadn’t he?
And as soon as he gave her the damned key, he could split for the day.
He needed distance. Perspective. A path back to the self-control he’d felt around her before last night had whacked him upside the head—or down below the belt. Hanging around the house with Pam all day wasn’t going to cure him of lust. He needed to stay away from her until he could think of her once again as the too-slim, too-prim yuppie she’d been before he’d pulled that idiotic newlywed stunt and carried her over the threshold.
The Shipwreck didn’t open for business until noon, but Brick and Kitty would probably be there this morning, cleaning up. God only knew how late the wedding celebration had raged on last night. Joe’s friends weren’t the sort to stand on ceremony. Just because the bride and groom had left didn’t mean the party couldn’t keep going in their honor.
Things probably hadn’t wound down until the wee hours. If Joe hadn’t gone and gotten himself hitched, he would have remained till the bitter end.
The hell with it. So he was hitched. He could still stay out late—he had to, and he would. Not just because his job demanded it but because, if he wanted to preserve his sanity, he would be best off steering clear of Pam until she was safely tucked into her own bed, in her own room, with her door shut.
He heard voices through the screened front door, Pamela’s and Lizard’s. Pamela sounded stern; Lizard whined. “I oh-weez go to the beach. Every day. If you don’t take me I’ll hate you forever.”
“I’ve already told you, Lizard, I’ve got to run some errands first. If you behave yourself—”
“I am behaving myself!”
“Then don’t behave yourself. Behave some other way. Behave like a nice, quiet girl.”
“I hate you!”
Joe shuddered. Things were worse than he’d thought. Pamela was stuck not just with a man who had once regarded her as too bony and now wanted only to jump her bones, but also with a brat whose whine could shatter crystal a mile away. Joe could apply the brakes to his sex drive, but after coping with the Liz-Monster for a morning, Pamela might decide to pack her bags and throw her lot in with the hit man in Seattle.
Hearing the screen door slam, he stood and left the kitchen for the hallway. “I’ll take Lizard to the beach,” he offered, recalling that he’d promised Pamela he wouldn’t saddle her with Lizard more than necessary. “You can do your errands. I’ll take the kid.”
“The kid,” Pamela responded, glowering at Joe’s pouting niece, “has been surly and sassy and doesn’t deserve to be rewarded. If she wants to go to the beach, she can earn it by behaving nicely.”
“You know what you are?” Lizard howled, crossing her arms over her chest and sticking her lower lip out as far as it could go. “You’re a twit.”
Joe relaxed. Lizard had picked up some nasty language hanging out at the Shipwreck. He’d taught her not to use bad words, but given how prickly she was at the moment, he had expected her to tag Pamela with some X-rated expression.
“Pam isn’t a twit,” he said. “She’s my wife, Lizard, and I expect you to treat her with respect.”
Lizard peered up with round, tear-filled eyes , evidently hoping to find an ally in him. “You know what she is? She’s a rotten tomato.”
“That’s enough, Liz.” He wasn’t sure whether he should leap right in and discipline the kid, or let her work things out with Pamela. If he interfered, they might never establish a truce on their own.
He glanced at Pamela, seeking guidance. But when his gaze met hers, he saw only stunning silver eyes, soft pink lips, a delicately sculpted chin, a slender throat begging to be kissed.
Man, he was bitten. Here he was, stuck in the middle of the first major quarrel that threatened to disrupt the peaceful domestic unit he’d worked so hard to achieve, and all he could think about was how this woman who was absolutely not his type was turning him on like a blender at the Shipwreck, crushing his resistance and pureeing his best intentions.
Pamela returned his gaze for a fraction of a second, then broke from him and glared down at Lizard. “You don’t win points with me for being obnoxious,” she said in a starchy schoolmarm voice. “Right now, Lizard, you’re being obnoxious.”
“So what? You’re noxious, too.”
“We’re going to run errands whether you like it or not.”
“I don’t like it! I don’t like you! I think you’re gross.”
“The feeling’s mutual.” Pamela headed for the stairs, calling over her shoulder, “I’m going to get my purse. If you can convince your uncle I’m noxious before I return, more power to you.” Her footsteps receded as she reached the top of the stairs. The house trembled slightly from the impact of her slamming her door.
Joe allowed himself a private smile at her long-distance show of anger. She’d kept her irritation in check downstairs, but Lizard had obviously pushed her too far. He kind of liked the idea of Pamela’s having a temper. He liked the idea that she had all sorts of volatile emotions churning inside her, ready to erupt at the slightest provocation.
Which wasn’t to say that Lizard was a slight provocation. But he liked imagining Pam in the throes of some wildly passionate emotion, even if it was anger.
He shouldn’t be imagining Pam in the throes of anything. Squatting down, he stared Lizard in the eye. “Listen up, toots: you aren’t winning any points with me, either.”
<
br /> “I don’t like her.” Lizard sulked. “I was playing at Birdie’s with this pink clay that Birdie said was magic, and we were going to make little dolls and bake them and then say chants over them and make curses and stuff? And she—” Lizard pointed accusingly up the stairs “—said I had to go learn to drive with her.”
“She already knows how to drive,” Joe corrected Lizard. “And you’re about ten years too young. What she’s got to do is get a Florida driver’s license. She has to fill out some forms and pay some money at the Motor Vehicle Bureau.”
“Well, she coulda left me at Birdie’s.”
“What did Birdie say about it?”
Lizard curled her lip. “She told me to go with her.” She pointed toward the stairs again. “They were whispering. They were plotting behind my back and everything.”
“What were they plotting?”
“Something with Legos.” Lizard scuffed her toe against the rug. “I wanna go to the beach, Uncle Joe. Make her take me to the beach.”
“I can’t make her do anything.” How true, he thought with a sigh. “Pamela’s part of our family now, and if Birdie thought you ought to spend the day with her, Birdie must have known what she was doing. So my advice, Ms. Monster, is, you go do errands with her, and if you don’t drive her nutty, I bet she’ll take you to the beach this afternoon.”
“Why can’t you take me to the beach?”
Because I can’t stay around Pamela. “I’ve got to go to the Shipwreck.”
“Bring me with you,” Lizard pleaded, pressing her grimy little hands together prayerfully. “I’ll help you. Please, Uncle Joe—”
Once again, he was faced with the option of doing the right thing. Like last night, he chose correctly, even though it broke his heart. “You’ve got to spend some time with Pamela. How else are you two going to learn to get along?”
“But I hate her!”
“She probably hates you, too. And given the way you’ve been acting toward her, I wouldn’t blame her.”
“I want her to hate me. Then maybe she’ll go away and leave us alone.”
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