Black Flame

by Ruby Laska

  Cal gave Deneen a hug too, then looked around. “Where’s Zane?”

  “Crashed on the couch,” Roan said. Everyone looked over, and sure enough, he was stretched out on the old plaid sofa, covered with a crocheted afghan. “Poor thing, he must be exhausted. He’ll probably sleep for the next week.”

  Roan hugged Jimmy too, a habit that he had to admit was rather nice, not because he found Roan attractive, but because, as many studies had shown, human contact was responsible for many benevolent physiological effects. And then they were gone. A few moments later Jimmy heard Cal’s truck pulling around the drive.

  Someone had turned out most of the lights while he had been cleaning up in the kitchen. The fire was winding down in the hearth, a few flames licking the logs.

  “Wow! So late! So very, very late,” Deneen said.

  “It’s only nine,” Jimmy pointed out. “Not an especially late hour to depart from a party. Of course, I think Roan and Cal may have been hoping for some privacy.”

  “Obviously,” she said shortly, turning away from him. She sounded irritated again. Since she was pleasant with others, and snappish only with him, the only logical deduction was that he was the irritant.

  Which was most unfortunate, given the attraction he felt for her, which was only growing despite his best efforts to exercise, ignore, and now dishwash it away.

  What Jimmy wanted more than anything else in the world right then was another chance with Deneen: a chance to kiss her, certainly, but also to get to know her better, so he might understand why exactly she affected him like no woman he’d ever met.

  He needed a smooth line, a silver tongue. For the first time he could recall, he envied his roommates. If only he were smooth like Matthew, or could sing like Chase. If he were passionate like Cal, or had Zane’s immaculate manners. He’d seen all four of his roommates in action, and he’d seen all of them succeed with women. Since he’d had plenty of opportunities of his own, it hadn’t occurred to him to study their technique, something which he now regretted.

  There had to be something he could say that would get Deneen to relax and talk to him. Earlier, when he had kissed her, he’d been overwhelmed by desire. His instincts had overridden his intellect. Now, while his attraction had only grown stronger, he’d become confused: it wasn’t a single night’s pleasure he hoped to attain with Deneen, but something more. What exactly that might be, he couldn’t even hope to imagine, since she lived many hundreds of miles away and was not compatible with him. And yet that very unreasoned desire was getting in the way of him approaching their interactions in a logical way.

  “So, it’s late, and I think I’ll just go read,” Deneen said, edging away from him.

  He was losing her fast, and he didn’t want to.

  “We all dance to a mysterious tune,” he said quickly.

  “Excuse me?” Deneen was frozen in the door to the hallway. Slowly, she turned and looked at him. “What did you just say?”

  Jimmy didn’t reply for a second. He knew exactly what he had just said—after all, it was a quote from the man he admired more than any other human being besides his mother—but why, of all the things the great man had said, that particular one had come out of his mouth, he had no idea.

  “Er, it’s just something Albert Einstein said.”

  She was watching him quizzically. “Okay, then. Well…like I said, I’m tired, and—”

  “That’s not the whole quote.”

  “It’s not?”

  No, it wasn’t. There was more…something about the forces of nature and—but that wasn’t quite it. “Everything is determined by forces over which we have no control,” he recited from memory.

  “Well, I’ll agree with you there,” Deneen said, softening a little. “I don’t have any control over the weather or it would be seventy-five degrees and sunny. And I don’t have any control over my sister, or she’d get her ass back here tonight so I wouldn’t have to stay in this sub-zero hell any longer than necessary.”

  The temperature was, in fact, above freezing—twenty-nine degrees the last time Jimmy had checked—and Western constructions of Hell generally held that it was hot, not cold, but Jimmy didn’t feel the need to correct Deneen. Instead, he was still trying to remember the rest of the quote, which he had discovered in a book his mother bought for him in a secondhand store for his sixteenth birthday—a book which was still among his prized possessions. After her death, he had spent long evenings finding comfort in its pages, and some of the quotes had spoken to him more than others.

  Because the great man had spoken of love. Einstein, whom everyone thought of as a crazy genius with a bad haircut, had actually written a great deal about matters of the heart.

  But the quote he was thinking of was eluding him. Well, at least Deneen was still standing here. Continuing the conversation seemed like his best hope of convincing her not to go to bed yet, and Jimmy cast about for subjects she might enjoy.

  “You had a pleasant conversation with your parents?”

  She grimaced. “Not really. My mom wants me to take a job taking care of a sick cat, and she wants to set Jayne up with a guy we went to high school with.”

  “Presumably, Matthew will object to her latter objective,” Jimmy said. “As far as caring for a sick cat, that job seems more suitable for someone like Roan, who is seeking an education as a veterinary technician.”

  “No kidding,” Deneen said.

  Jimmy’s stomach growled.

  Deneen raised her eyebrows. “You have got to be kidding me,” she said. “All through dinner, you barely touched a bite. Did you hate it? Because I have to say, having sampled your cooking, that would be really weird.”

  “No,” Jimmy said, figuring that honesty was his best bet. “I found that I was too distracted to eat.”

  “Is that right? Couldn’t keep your mind on the moment? Thoughts wandering to anyone special? Because you could have invited them to dinner, we had plenty.”

  Deneen’s eyes narrowed; she looked angry again. Jimmy, trying to follow the confusing turn her speech had taken, stammered, “The holidays are customarily shared with one’s family, unless distance precludes such an arrangement.”

  “What are you trying to say?” Her voice was becoming quite shrill. If Jimmy had to guess, he would say that his comment had only increased her displeasure with him.

  “Um, only that I don’t know of anyone who wasn’t here tonight that didn’t already have plans.”

  Deneen’s mouth flattened into a thin line, and the color on her cheeks went bright. It seemed briefly possible that she might actually strike him.

  But after a moment, she sighed.

  “Look. I’ll fix you a plate, as long as you understand it isn’t going to lead to any more kissing. Do we have a deal?”

  Despite his growling stomach, food wasn’t really what Jimmy was craving. But at this point he figured he might as well take what he could get.

  “Deal.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Jimmy beat a hasty retreat when Deneen started taking dishes out of the fridge. With Zane sleeping in the family room, the only other option was the living room, and she was glad to have him out of the way so she could think for a few minutes.

  As she mounded slices of turkey with dressing, potatoes, and roasted vegetables, she wondered why she hadn’t stuck to her guns and gone to bed. Jimmy had practically called her a loser, since apparently everyone who had a better offer, or family to be with, was doing that for the holidays. Including, obviously, his girlfriend. At least Nan had taken the time to drop off her little love note, which was still sitting on the counter where Jimmy had left it.

  Curious, that he didn’t read it right away. Maybe her ardor for him wasn’t returned. Maybe he was even in the process of letting her down easy. Only a real heel would break up with a woman right before Christmas; wasn’t it possible that Jimmy was only waiting as an act of kindness?

  Deneen’s involuntarily reaction to the thought was embar
rassing: her heart leapt with hope, and the rest of her—the part that had gotten all tingly during the kissing thing—got tingly all over again. Which was downright pathetic. Heart-stopping body aside, Jimmy was, to put it mildly, problematic. They couldn’t even communicate without him missing all of her nonverbal cues and trying to reduce everything to scientific reasoning. And what would her friends back home make of him?

  Still, she’d thought of little else all day. She’d even completely forgotten to flirt with Zane to take her mind off of him. And her vow to stay out of his way had lasted as long as her walk outside in the freezing cold—which was to say, not very long at all.

  Once she’d re-covered the leftovers and returned them to the fridge, she poured herself a glass of the crisp white wine that Roan had brought, and a seltzer for Jimmy. Thanks to a waitressing job that had lasted nearly six months before the manager fired her for spending more time fussing over garnishes than waiting on her customers, Deneen was able to easily carry both the plate and the full glasses to the living room without spilling a drop.

  Jimmy had been busy while she was in the kitchen. The bunkhouse had two fireplaces—Jayne had explained that the one separating the kitchen from the family room had once been used to heat water and cook—and Jimmy had got a fire going, which was crackling nicely. The only other light came from the enormous Christmas tree, which was too tall to fit in the family room. Even without the ornaments that Deneen had borrowed to dress up the brunch earlier in the day, it was a breathtaking sight, its lights shimmering and sparkling.

  “Oh, that’s beautiful,” Deneen said, setting the plate on the scarred old rosewood coffee table.

  “I believe Matthew intends to refinish this furniture,” Jimmy said. “He got it at a garage sale after he remodeled this room last summer.

  “No, I meant the tree. And the fire. We don’t use our fireplace much in Arkansas.”

  “Since the average annual low temperature is thirty degrees higher there, a fire would be a poor use of resources,” Jimmy agreed.

  “Well, then I guess that’s one good thing about living in the North Pole,” Deneen said, sinking down into the down-filled cushions next to him. “And before you point out that we aren’t anywhere near the North Pole, let me tell you that I am aware that there are several land masses, including Greenland, as well as both Hudson Bay and Baffin Bay between us and it.”

  “Your knowledge of geography is impressive.”

  Deneen laughed. Maybe it was the lateness of the hour; maybe she’d been worn down by the call to her parents and the arrival of Jimmy’s girlfriend’s note, but she felt oddly relaxed. She took a sip of her wine before explaining.

  “I did well in geography. I even took three semesters of it in college. I’ve always dreamed of traveling, even though I haven’t been able to afford to do much yet.”

  “Maybe you could get a job in the travel industry,” Jimmy said, “though much of it is now conducted online, I believe.”

  “Funny you should say that.”

  “Funny in what way?”

  Deneen deliberated, trying to decide whether to confide in him. “It’s just that when we were little, Jayne and I had this elaborate paper doll set. Ladies from all around the world. And when she and I and my best friend played with them, Lisa always wanted to dress them, Jayne wanted them to get jobs in the construction industry—she was pretty susceptible to Mom’s influence—and I just wanted to throw parties for them. I even got books out of the library, about customs in other countries. I had pretend Japanese tea services and German Oktoberfest parties and Mexican fiestas.” She smiled at the memory. “Mom refused to let me buy party supplies, so no matter what country I was learning about, all I ever served was Kool-Aid, and saltine and Velveeta sandwiches.”

  “Well, you certainly have come a long way.” Jimmy gestured at the plate: Deneen had fanned the turkey slices in a crescent, layering them with thin-sliced prosciutto and slivers of scalloped potato. A sprig of Italian parsley nestled into a rosette sculpted from the end of an English cucumber.

  Deneen blushed. “It’s nothing.”

  Jimmy was silent a moment. It looked like he was deep in thought. When he spoke, he had a look of intense concentration. “You are very disparaging of your own work, and yet I’ve never met anyone who is capable of what you’ve accomplished today, with the decorations and food and…well, I guess you’d call it entertaining.”

  “Yes, that’s generally what it’s called,” Deneen said. His compliment—because she was pretty sure that’s what Jimmy was attempting—made her feel both uncomfortable and flattered.

  But he continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “When you told me you hoped to work as a wedding planner, I thought it was a frivolous idea. I couldn't imagine that such an enterprise could constitute an actual career. But today, I noticed that the things you did had an actual, measurable, positive effect. They enhanced people’s enjoyment of both the brunch and tonight’s dinner, and seemed to foster merriment and interaction.”

  “Well, I’ve never heard anyone describe it quite that way before, but that’s the general idea.” Deneen gave a rueful laugh. “Too bad my sister decided to elope before I could do my magic for her.”

  “Jayne and Matthew have eloped?”

  “Well, she didn’t come out and say it, but in her message she said she had big news that she wanted to tell me in person, and I don’t know what else it could be.”

  “You sound…sad,” Jimmy said, after a moment.

  An emotion. Deneen looked at him carefully, unsure whether or not to remark on what was a pretty unusual remark for him. She didn’t want to condescend. But it seemed like a big step.

  “I am a little sad,” she admitted. She thought about telling him the rest of what was on her mind—how crestfallen she’d felt to find out about his girlfriend, even coming clean about her mixed feelings about her attraction to him—when she saw something shiny under the Christmas tree, reflecting the sparkling lights.

  “Oh, no! Someone still has a gift under there that they forgot to open.”

  She jumped off the couch and went to retrieve it. It was about the size and shape of a crock pot, and just as heavy. Sitting down again, she bent close to make out the handwritten name on the package. “But—it says it’s for me,” she said, confused.

  Jimmy was sitting up very straight. “It, uh, is.”

  “Did Jayne leave it for me?”

  “No. Not Jayne.” He picked up his glass of seltzer and chugged half of it down, before adding quickly, “It’s from me.”

  “You?”

  Jimmy nodded, looking miserable.

  “But—when did you get it? And why didn’t you give it to me earlier?”

  “You gave me something,” he said softly, which didn’t answer either of her questions. “And then you seemed, um…and there just didn’t seem to be a good time.”

  Deneen tore a bit of the paper from the package. Inside, she saw a glint of metal. If he really had gotten her a crock pot, she wasn’t sure how she was going to respond. Or, worse yet, if he’d dug the crock pot out from the recesses of the old kitchen cabinets, reasoning that Matthew would never miss it—

  But surely even Jimmy Mason couldn’t be that awkward, could he?

  With a deep breath, Deneen ripped the rest of the paper off the package. Inside was a cylindrical device that was flat on top and spun on an axis; attached to it was what looked like the pedal from her mother’s sewing machine. Deneen turned the thing one way or another, before finally admitting, “I, um, have no idea what this is.”

  “For your cakes.”

  “My cakes?”

  “To turn them. You put the cake on it, and use the foot pedal to power it. I built in two speeds. I wasn’t, um, sure exactly how fast you make the, er, frosting shapes.”

  Deneen looked at the thing with renewed interest. “Seriously? Because if it works, it will be the most awesome thing in, like, the entire history of cake decorating.”

  �
��It’ll work,” Jimmy said. “I tested it. I mean, not with a cake. But I put an English muffin on it. That’s where I got the idea for those.” He pointed at the underside of the cylinder, where short skewers were fastened with clips. “You put those in the holes on the surface, and they’ll hold anything in place while you apply frosting to it. Or peanut butter, which is what I put on the English muffin.”

  “You’re brilliant,” Deneen said admiringly. To her amazement, Jimmy had actually come up with something practical, generous, and perfectly suited for her. Which was more than she could say for either of the gifts she’d given him.

  “I know,” Jimmy said miserably.

  “You know…that you’re brilliant?”

  “Yes. My IQ is one hundred sixty-eight. Unfortunately, it hasn’t helped me understand people very well.”

  Deneen tried to think of something encouraging to say, but it was true—Jimmy had diagnosed himself, and his problem, perfectly.

  “Your friends like you,” she pointed out diplomatically.

  “Yes, but only because I can play football.”

  “What?”

  “Back when we were juniors in high school, Coach Emerson noticed my speed and agility and asked the professor—”

  “I know all that,” Deneen interrupted impatiently. “Every kid that ever went to Red Fork High knows that story. It’s a legend. But what does it have to do with these guys liking you now?”

  Jimmy thought for what seemed like a very long time. “I guess because they got used to me.”

  “So you’re saying that they only befriended you because you could throw a ball, and then, ten years later, pure—what, inertia?—caused them to invite you up here to a whole other state because they hadn’t bothered to make any other friends.”

  “They have plenty of friends,” Jimmy said.

  “Jayne told me that you help Matthew with construction projects, especially the ones that involve heavy lifting; that you give money to Zane’s favorite charity; that you never miss one of Chase’s performances; and that if it hadn’t been for your help and encouragement, Cal probably never would have made it onto the force or ended up with Roan.”