The Corner of Forever and Always

by Lia Riley

  “Looks like you’re rescuing a damsel in distress.” The commissioner on his right slapped Beau’s tense back. “Go on, son. Don’t worry about us.”

  He wasn’t.

  Could anyone see the pounding pulse in his neck, his feet cemented in place?

  “Mayor! Mayor! Mayor!” the children chanted, beating their fists in time with the words.

  A fog of eerie calm descended. The line parted, and he took each step with the slow, measured cadence of a man approaching the gallows.

  “Mayor! Mayor! Mayor!” The children piled into an open log, which gave a sickening lurch to the left. “Woo! Woo!”

  “That’s your seat there.” A girl wearing a Braves ball cap pointed to the empty spot right in front.

  His stomach churned. This town thought they knew everything about him, but they didn’t know the half.

  Not even his biggest fear.

  Chapter Four

  “Oh. Em. Gee.” Tuesday clapped a hand over her mouth. “I have no words.” The English language was unequipped to describe the image on the grainy screen in the Lumberjack’s Revenge photo kiosk.

  She might have failed to mention the teeny-tiny fact that the kids who had begged for him to go on the ride had saved him a special spot in “the Soak Seat,” the nickname Happily Ever After Land staffers had for the first position in the log ride.

  The souvenir snapshot captured Beau midplunge, his hands white-knuckling the sides, his mouth open wide enough to catch every mosquito in a five-mile radius. And there was the matter of his eyes.

  Sheer terror.

  Tuesday had to peek through her fingers. Oh God, oh God. Maybe this time she’d taken the fun too far.

  “Is the mayor joking?” Robbie, one of the ride operators filling in at the kiosk, rubbed a hand over his ginger peach fuzz. “He doesn’t seem the type to play the clown.”

  It was impossible for her to tear her gaze from the image, his expression so unexpectedly out of character that she tittered, a guilty, nervous reaction. Why did she do this, get giggle attacks at times like these, the worst possible reaction? She was the queen of inappropriate laughter, cackling whenever scared, hurt, or stuck in an awkward situation. In the face of overwhelming anxiety, she couldn’t hold back the floodgates.

  “His face”—she gasped—“it’s so—oops!” She’d given a very Sandra Bullock esque snort.

  Robbie roared, actually slapping one knee. “Like a stray cat crossing the road while a Ferrari takes a bend at forty over.” He cut off midgurgle and straightened as his cheeks blanched.

  Ruh-roh. A sense of foreboding descended. “He’s standing right behind me, isn’t he?”

  Robbie must have noticed his shoe was untied and dropped behind the counter.

  Tuesday turned around slowly. Beau’s crisp white shirt had been the epitome of businesslike good taste until its encounter with a few hundred gallons of heavily chlorinated water. The wet cotton plastering his chest left little to the imagination. She swallowed hard. Didn’t he have a desk job? Nothing about those deliciously thick, hard slabs of pectoral muscle hinted at long sedentary hours in the cause of public service.

  She’d never spared a second thought to the yacht he co-owned with Rhett Valentine berthed at Buccaneer’s Marina. Swimming wasn’t her strong suit, and Shark Week gave her hives. She’d just as soon shave her head as set foot on an oceangoing vessel. But her lack of water enthusiasm notwithstanding, Beau’s impressive physique was suited to the open sea. Everything about him hinted at agility and capability.

  Forcing her gaze to travel up over his corded neck muscles and to his furious expression, she pointed at the neon $9.99 sign. “Care to support the park with a memento of the ride?”

  “I’ll pass.” He adjusted his gray knit blazer, his eyes the same color as chipped ice and his tone just as cool.

  Her gaze swung south, stealing another gander at that strong chest. “Did you have fun?” she asked with exaggerated innocence. Provoking his bad humor would put an end to her oglefest.

  “Think I travel with a spare change of clothes?” His Adam’s apple rose and fell. “This. Is. The. Georgia. Tourism. Commission”—he bit off the words, practically spitting them out—“the statewide body for promotion. I need to win their respect so this town can be taken seriously, and look at me.”

  He was adept at masking his true thoughts and feelings, almost as good as her, but as his carefully guarded composure slipped, she found herself with a front-row seat to his hidden feelings. The anger. The embarrassment. The frustration.

  Darn it. She must have been a Catholic in a past life because guilt gave her hives. She’d taken the prank too far, the same way she took everything in life. God, she hated being such a screwup. There had to be a way to make this right. She ground the heels of her hands into her eyes as the frustration built.

  Think…

  Think…

  Inspiration struck right as he turned to leave. “Wait! Stop. I have an idea! I got you into this mess, and I can get you out!”

  He didn’t turn his face, merely glanced sideways through his thick lashes. “What?” He must be desperate if he was still speaking to her.

  “Well…” She fiddled with a loose ribbon on the bodice. “I’m not saying you’ll like it, but you’ll be dry.”

  He managed a negligible nod even as his jaw muscles flexed. “Go on.”

  “I can’t break off from the group, but Robbie can step away from the kiosk. Hardly anyone ever buys these overpriced photos.” She turned to the boy gaping from the cash register. “Take Mayor Marino to the lost and found.”

  Beau gaped. “Lost and—”

  “You’d be surprised what visitors leave,” she countered matter-of-factly. “I suppose there’s a little risk of lice, but a louse dies after seventy-two hours without a human host.” She frowned, considering. “Louse. Is that right? Or is it lice? I never know which one is right.”

  “Oh no. No. No. No way in hell.” He shoved a hand in his pants pocket. “Lice? Christ, Tuesday, I’m—”

  “Going to trust me.” She glanced down and blinked twice. Just what did her hand think it was doing on his wrist? From the way his powerful forearm muscles flexed beneath her palm, her unprompted touch surprised him as well.

  There’d been a recent segment on a late-night news show about how attraction turned the brain into a hormonal jambalaya, hampering rational decision making. It wasn’t a random cockeyed theory either. She was living the truth right here, right now.

  Tingles radiated from her elbow as if she’d struck a funny bone. Jerking away, she balled her hand into a fist and backed out of his gravitational pull. She tugged the ribbon again, snapping it when he stalked away without another word, Robbie trailing sheepishly in his wake. It wasn’t until his footsteps faded that her lungs resumed normal operations.

  On a scale of one to trouble, this was a definite “uh-oh.”

  She’d fallen asleep before the end of the news show. Maybe she should look it up, see if there was an antidote. Hypnotherapy might provide another viable option, because she needed a cure once and for all to stop being attracted to jerky guys.

  * * *

  Ten minutes later Beau returned wearing a blue and orange Florida Gators T-shirt. Talk about adding insult to injury—he’d gone to Georgia, stayed there through his master’s of public administration, a die-hard Bulldog who bled red and black. Hell, even a Tech shirt would have been better. But the only other choices in the lost and found box were a size small STRAIGHT OUTTA MY MAMA wifebeater and a dingy T-shirt that read I LOVE CUMMING (GEORGIA).

  Trust me, Tuesday had said.

  Yeah. Right. He’d trust Tuesday Knight as far as he could throw her. And given her scrawny frame could use a couple extra helpings of grits, he could probably throw her a good distance from Everland. Frowning, his gaze lingered on her small hands, the butterfly-quick movements of her gestures. When she tossed back her head, laughing at something one of the children asked, something about
the delicate curve in her throat caught his breath. She had an energy about her, an enthusiasm for life that was contagious, drew people in with magnetic force. He fisted the plastic shopping bag holding his sodden clothes, shoved down his head with effort, his jaw clenched, and glared at a wad of chewing gum stuck to the pavement.

  Better. He blinked, the tightness in his chest easing a fraction as he regained control. No more gawking. For the rest of the morning, so long as Tuesday remained stuck in his orbit, he’d remain detached and do his best to avoid any further engagement. When that was unavoidable, he’d treat her with a cool but civil politeness.

  Yes. He gave an inward nod. Perfect. A solid game plan.

  “Let’s pop into Madam Magna’s tent,” she was saying up ahead, pointing out a large red-and-white-striped tent. “With any luck, she’ll tell one or two of you your fortune before lunch.”

  Beau arched a brow. Jesus, Madam Magna was alive? That old woman had been pushing two hundred when he was a kid. Stepping inside her tent, he glanced around. It was like entering a time warp, the surrounds exactly as he remembered: dim, shadowy, the outside world muffled. As children, he and Rhett had dared each other to creep in and spy, but Madam Magna had taken it in stride. Once she’d busted him squatting behind a potted fern and said in a far-off voice, “It will be all right in the end. If it’s not, it’s not the end.” After Jacqueline’s unexpected death, the memory had offered a measure of comfort.

  A hush fell over the crowd. Madam Magna perched at a small circular table covered by an embroidered crimson brocade. A crystal ball was placed off to the side, while in front of her rose a stack of hand-painted tarot cards.

  “Who seeks the unseeable?” Madam Magna drawled in a thick Eastern European burr. “Thirsts with a desire to know the unknowable? Craves answers to the ageless secrets? Whose loins quiver with the ache to understand?”

  “Thank you, Madam Magna,” Tuesday broke in. “So wonderful that you made yourself welcome to this group of children.” Her tone was heavy on the Cool it with the loin-quiver references in front of the under-eighteens, please.

  “Silence!” Madam Magna commanded. At the clap of her hands, the flames from the two gold-dipped candles on either side of the tarot cards sparked into the air. “There are those here with questions, and I have answers.”

  A freckled-nosed child looked around and sniffled. “I don’t like this.”

  “Maybe we should get back to the rides.” Tuesday took a step back. “We do have quite a lot more ground to cover before lunch and—”

  Madam Magna clapped her hands again, twice this time, and the twin flames extinguished. A trio of girls screamed. Through the smoke the old woman intoned garbled words, rolling her head around and around, the sequins in her turban glinting in the half-light. She went rigid, gripped the table, and let out a guttural groan.

  Freckle Face up front went from a bad case of the sniffles to full-blown hysterics. The girls on either side joined in.

  “Should we call an ambulance?” Angie Robert shouted over the din.

  “What’s lost will be found,” Madam Magna droned in a deep voice. “Dragons do not always win. Heroes come from the most unlikely places.”

  A crash boomed from the room’s corner. The moody-looking girl who’d made a point not to join any of the group’s fun dropped an unwieldy art portfolio. Paper spilled. Intricate ink sketches appeared to fill the pages.

  “This is stupid.” The girl squatted down, crushing the drawings to her chest. Her eyes were almost as black as the thick makeup surrounding them. “This is all f-fucking stupid.”

  “Ooooh, Flick said the ‘f’ word!” A kid in a purple sun hat tugged Tuesday’s skirt with undisclosed glee as the tent erupted into a raucous mix of laughter and jeers.

  The girl in black—Flick, presumably—fled. Tuesday’s face tightened with worry, nothing like the ditzy princess from earlier, flouncing around the park seemingly without a care in the world.

  “We need to go after her,” she said, sweeping past him. “Come on, kids, hi-ho, hi-ho!”

  In the chaotic span of twenty seconds the tent emptied, leaving Beau alone with five startled Tourism Commission officials and an ancient woman still gripped in some sort of a foggy-eyed trance.

  “Do we leave her like that?” someone asked behind him. From the sound of their hopeful timbre that was the preferred choice.

  “Go on ahead.” Beau forced a tone of good cheer. “Meet me at Hush Puppy Heaven. I’ve arranged for us to stop there and grab a bite to eat.”

  “Hush puppies, you say?” The guy on his right perked. “Heard they make ’em good around here. That right, Marino?”

  Beau’s laugh came out less manufactured than he feared. “The recipe’s a secret more secure than Fort Knox, but tell you what, I taste buttermilk in the batter.”

  “Mmm-mmm-mmm. Just the way Mama made ’em.”

  “See you in a minute, folks. Nothing to worry about here.” He hoped his smile was reassuring. “I’ll be along in a moment.”

  The group didn’t appear to fully believe him, but they also didn’t seem interested in challenging the point.

  Once they left, he stepped forward and his foot slid. Under his shoe was one of Flick’s drawings. A dragon seated on a throne holding a scepter. In fancy script she’d doodled, “Sometimes the dragon wins.”

  He frowned. Talk about an uncanny coincidence. No wonder the kid freaked. She’d looked barely thirteen, too. No one should be so cynical that young.

  “Some see much but observe little.” Madam Magna peered through the gloom with a stony-faced Yoda-like wisdom.

  “Ma’am, do you have someone I can call to take you home and out of this heat?” As soon as he said the words he realized he didn’t know where Madam Magna lived. Everland wasn’t big, but she never pushed a buggy around the Piggly Wiggly or strolled Main Street. Where did she come from and where did she go?

  “Life is a song,” she said, regarding him steadily. “Music happens in the silence between the notes.”

  “Are you on medication or—”

  She held up a silencing finger. “Listen. Hear that?”

  Blood thrummed through his ears. “What?”

  “You’re a powerful man with many rules.” She clicked her tongue. “Clever. Focused. Determined. And yet…blind. You do not see there is only one rule that ever matters.”

  “Which is?” What was he doing? Surely he wasn’t taking this old woman’s baffling mumbo jumbo seriously?

  “The exception. But that’s enough…It is time.” Madam Magna stood in a creaky movement, her smile sphinxlike, and shuffled through a nearly undetectable slit in the back of the tent without further explanation.

  Beau shook his head and folded the young girl’s paper into his pocket. He’d woken today primed to sell Everland to the Tourism Commission, but all his best-laid plans had unraveled, and there was only one person to blame.

  “I left Robbie in charge.” The person in question burst through the tent’s main entrance. “Did you call an ambul—” Tuesday’s golden brows arched in confusion as she swiveled her head right and left. “Where is she? Where’s Madam Magna?”

  “She has an escape route,” Beau said grimly. Tuesday was even prettier up close, her lips a pale champagne pink. If he were a different type of man, the sight might fizz away his common sense, leave him reeling a little, as if drunk.

  “Wait, so she’s not sick? Geez Louise, she really had me going. Let me catch my breath.” She braced her hands on her hips and bent forward, shoulders heaving. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to sprint in heels? I’m about to pass out.”

  There were many places to look in the tent, all sorts of directions that weren’t Tuesday’s small, perfect breasts, the tops of which strained against the thick brocade. If he reached out, he could gather that cheap fabric in his fists and wrench it open like some plundering pirate.

  “What?” She caught him out midstare, her laughter dissolving into a strained si
lence. Agitation charged his nerve endings, shot hot pulses down his spine. On and on the silence stretched until she sucked in her lower lip, then released it with a soft but audible pop, plump and glistening. His groin warmed at the unbearably fascinating sight. No more space remained in his head to strategize or assess consequences—a pure, primal want crowded out all reason.

  He took a step, then another, and in doing so crossed whatever invisible line separated their personal space. Her lashes fluttered, her pupils dilating in the half-light, struggling to focus.

  “What the hell is this?” he growled. “Why do you make me so damn crazy?”

  “I…should go.” She didn’t so much as budge.

  “Now.” The helpless word emerged as a rasp. A plea.

  The distance between their lips decreased. His vision blurred as her scent invaded his senses: sweet grass, grapefruit, and cucumber, fresh and light as a summer’s day.

  “Or what?” Challenge brightened her chestnut eyes.

  “My God.” His stomach constricted as if he were hungry—no, starving. The room’s spicy incense smoke must be wreaking havoc on his senses. A lack of sufficient oxygen was the only explanation for this whole-body intoxication. The solid ground on which he’d built his entire self-control tilted off-kilter, sinking into invisible quicksand. Pure, unadulterated need tugged on his legs, threatened to suck him down to some kind of strangely wonderful hell.

  “This.” He fisted her thick blond hair, barely able to register that it felt even silkier than it looked, before crushing his mouth to hers. When her lips parted in answer, her tongue sliding over his, tasting of pink cotton candy, all rational thought ceased.

  Chapter Five

  Tuesday enjoyed life’s little unpredictabilities, how every day had the potential to be a grand adventure, although granted, of late, the hours tended to unfold with monotonous regularity. Gone were the excitement of auditions, the daydreaming walks past theaters like the Richard Rogers, the Gershwin, or the New Amsterdam, or opening a script on the subway like it might be her version of Charlie’s golden ticket—a chance to be a star. A game-changing role.