by Robyn Carr
“I’m the ‘missing heiress,’ Mrs. Blakely, and if you let me see your husband, we can complete this transaction in a few minutes. Then I will leave you alone. If you force me to call my attorney about this, it will cost you, because I am angry.”
The woman stood still for a second, stunned. Then she slowly turned like a rotating statue. “Henry,” she called.
He, too, looked out of place in such a decorous environment. He wore a white undershirt, slippers, baggy pants with his belly hanging obtrusively over his belt, and he had a nasty cigar in his mouth. The slumlord.
Mrs. Blakely passed the tabloid to her husband, who looked at the picture and then Chris, taking the cigar from his mouth. She gave him a minute to get the headline, but no more. “We can settle this in five minutes, Mr. Blakely. Your faulty furnace not only destroyed my every worldly possession, it nearly killed us all. In fact, I was rescued from the burning house. Now, I am not a difficult person, only fair. I would like some refunds and some restitution. There is the matter of the deposit—the first and last months’ rent—the rent I paid for the month of November, and lost valuables.” She reached into her purse. She unfolded an itemized list and held it out to him. Her children stood stoically on each side of her. “I take responsibility for fifty percent of the possessions lost in the fire because I did not have renter’s insurance, which I should have had. I will take five thousand dollars now, or I will take you to court and sue for pain and suffering, as well. And I can get the best lawyer in the country.”
“Um…maybe you’d better come in.”
“No, that won’t be necessary. I’ll wait right here. It won’t take you that long to write a check.”
A teenager shrieked from inside the big house. “Mother! Where is my—”
“Shut up, Ellen! Just a minute!” Mrs. Blakely barked.
“I oughta check with my lawyer before I—” the landlord began.
“That won’t take long, either. Here’s what he’ll tell you—if you have been approached with an itemized list of damages and you have made restitution in that exact amount, she really won’t have a leg to stand on in court if she comes after you for more. Unless, of course, there are injuries, which there were not. Now, let’s get this over with, shall we?”
Mrs. Blakely glared at Chris from behind her husband. She crossed her arms over her ample chest while Henry Blakely shuffled away with the list in his hand. The worst of it, Chris believed, was the fact that they had no remorse for the danger they had allowed in renting poorly maintained property. That the rent had been low did not absolve them. The malfunctioning furnace was Henry Blakely’s fault, and he had never even called to see if Chris and her children were all right. Mrs. Blakely, who should be flushing in shame at her husband’s callous evasion of responsibility, stood like a sentry in the doorway while the unrepentant man went in pursuit of a phone call or a check or a better idea.
These people were poor and didn’t know it, Chris decided.
“Here,” he said, handing her a check in less than ten minutes. “I don’t want to hear from you again.”
“Oh, you won’t, believe me.” And she walked away from them, pity for their selfishness leaving a sour taste in her mouth.
She was up, dressed and had the coffee brewed when Mike came home from the station early in the morning, beginning his four days off.
“We’re on our own for a while?” Mike asked when Chris told him Flo had gone. “What does that mean?”
“I’ve convinced Flo to back off and give me some room. She acted like an ass. I’m really sorry.”
“Not that I was any Prince Charming. I don’t usually act that way around anyone.”
“Neither does she.”
“She, uh, spoke with some experience,” he said.
“Oh, she’s a born fighter, don’t get me wrong. But she’s not the snob she appeared to be. She wants me back, wants me home. It’s been a long separation.”
“But you didn’t go.”
Chris sighed. “Not because I don’t love her. I need Flo in my life. She can be a real pain, but we have a lot of good history, too. The Flo you met was not my generous and strong friend, but a terrified mother lion afraid of losing her cub. I apologize for her.”
Mike nodded, then changed the subject. “I had this idea about Christmas,” he said. “The kids like the cabin so much, I thought we might go there, have a real Christmas, chop our own tree—”
“What about your family?” she asked.
“They could spare my presence for one year. What about yours?”
“She’ll come back, Mike, if this is where I am through the holidays. You don’t have to accept Flo, but I can’t reject my family any more than you can reject yours. Flo has never been with the kids for the holidays.”
“Maybe I should call up to Pembroke Pines and see if the caterer is busy. Or will she bring her own staff?”
She flinched.
“Sorry. It’s just that she made me feel so damned inadequate. Middle-class. I’ve never felt that way before. I guess I wanted to be the one to give you a chance to rebuild your life.”
Chris bit her lip. “Maybe we should talk about this. Maybe you found me easy to care about when you thought I was helpless, destitute. Is it harder for you because I’m not? Just how far do you want to go to see if this crazy thing is real?”
He didn’t hesitate to think it over. “I want to go all the way to the end. Wherever that is.”
Chapter 11
“Mrs. Cavanaugh is cooking an Irish stew,” Hal said, placing the plates around the table.
Mike turned from the pot he was stirring and grinned at Hal. “It’s spaghetti,” he said.
“Everything you cook tastes like Irish stew.”
“Hey, lay off,” Stu said. “I love Mrs. Cavanaugh’s Irish spaghetti.”
“I’d put my cooking against yours any day of the week,” Mike challenged Hal. “My red beans and rice against your chili.”
“Against my potato soup, and you have a deal.”
“Name the day and put some green on it.”
“Hey, how are things with the heiress?”
Mike stirred the pot again. “Don’t call her that, okay?”
“Uh-oh. What’s the matter, Little Mike? Chris go home to Auntie Flo?”
“I’d go for the aunt,” Stu said. “In a minute, I’d go for the aunt. My wife would write me a note.”
“My wife asked me to make a play for the aunt, and then send money.”
“The auntie has gone away, for now, while Little Mike thinks about the furniture business.”
Mike dumped the spaghetti into a colander. “You wanna eat, dog-breath?”
“No kidding, what’s going on? You getting married?”
“Married?” he asked, as though amazed. Was he that transparent? “I’ve only known her a few weeks.”
“What’s taking you so long?” Hal asked.
“I’d have her in front of the priest,” Stu said. “She’s loaded, right? She’s cute, too—I saw that much. Stupid me, I shoulda gotten into that house ahead of him.”
“You’re married already, Stuart. Although I know you tend to forget that from time to time.”
“I have these blackouts. Spells.”
“Yeah. You keep getting engaged.”
“Naw. I go steady sometimes. A little.”
There was laughter. Mike rinsed the spaghetti. He had a hard time with Stu sometimes—didn’t like the way he handled personal business. Otherwise he liked him. Good firefighter. A little green about life, but good in a fire. If Stu knew what it was like to lose a family, he wouldn’t waste precious time away from his; he wouldn’t fool around on his wife. Hal, young like Stu, still less than thirty, got a big kick out of Stu’s antics, but Hal didn’t fool around. He was serious about his young family. Mike liked that. Hal was a good cook, too. He had a little business on the side when he wasn’t fighting fires, which was typical of firemen.
Jim Eble was Mike’s cl
osest friend besides family. They were nearly the same age and had worked the same rig for five years. They were alike in personal values as well as sharing many favorite pastimes. But Jim couldn’t go fishing with Mike too often because he drove an ambulance part-time when he wasn’t on duty; he’d be paying for college educations before long.
Mike was the only one, in fact, who didn’t work at something else when he wasn’t here. His income was plentiful for a single man, and with all the other kids in the family married and off doing their family things, he used his days off to make sure his mom and dad had everything they needed. And he liked to go to the cabin. Maybe he didn’t have another business, but things like hunting, fishing, camping and riding took time. There was no work he liked more than this work. The furniture business? In a pig’s eye.
“Don’t let ’em get to you, Little Mike,” Jim said while they did the dishes.
“They don’t get to me. They’re having fun. That’s okay.”
“Things are okay with Chris, then?”
“Yeah, I guess. I mean, she’s the same person I pulled out of the house, right?”
“Well, is she?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Hey, Little Mike, don’t let the bull from these guys get in your way, huh? You know what you want, right?”
No, he didn’t know what he wanted. He thought he knew, but now he wasn’t sure. Sure that he loved her a lot, yes. But all that other stuff, money, was getting to him. Getting him down.
How good he had felt when he carried bags and bags of groceries into the house to fill them up—to fill them up because they were empty. He had felt like a man, a dad, a provider. Maybe it wasn’t his right, but he had. He liked to put himself to use that way.
That was what firefighters did; they helped people who needed help. It didn’t stop after the fire was out or the victim saved. They had their charities, individually and as a group. They were called upon to teach kids, help little old ladies, organize benefits. Brave men and women. Firefighters helped people much more gracefully than they accepted help.
Then Chris didn’t need so much anymore, and things changed. It wasn’t his feelings for Chris and the kids and that stupid dog that had changed; it was this terrible discomfort he felt in his gut because he wasn’t in charge anymore. Because without him they could survive just fine. He wanted to be the one they needed the most. He wouldn’t have thought this would be so hard. This was a side of himself he didn’t like.
Packages in Christmas wrap had arrived from Aunt Flo, in case Chris and the kids were still with him by then. Without opening them, he knew they were expensive presents. When he took his jacket out of the hall closet to go to work this morning, he had looked at Chris’s jackets. More than one now. He had spent a lot on the jackets he bought for Chris and Carrie and Kyle so they could go up to the snowy hills. Now, in the front closet, was a new suede coat. Auntie Flo had probably paid ten times as much. He felt reduced.
Chris looked different now. Even though she looked better than ever, he wanted it all to have come from him. It was unfair, and he knew it, but it was still fighting inside him. He thought about his family and knew money shouldn’t bother him so much. His brother Chris had a lot of money. Orthodontics was a good-paying profession, and Chris was a clever investor. Money could be loads of fun. He thought about his sister Mo who made way more money than her husband, and how stupid he thought it was that they should ever argue about it. What was the difference how much or whose or where it came from if it put food on the table and provided for the future? So why, he asked himself, was he feeling the opposite of his own beliefs?
On the first night he stayed with her in his own house he had opened up a secret part of himself and told her about his deepest pain. The shamelessness of it didn’t humiliate him; he was ready to be as frank about his weakness as he had been obvious in his strength. But now, when he had this little injury inside over her money and her aunt, he didn’t talk to her about it. He didn’t say, “I’m in pain because you’re buying new sheets when I want to buy them for you. I hurt because I feel not good enough. I’m afraid I can’t give you anything.” He said, “Looks nice.” Then he sulked. And his pain popped out somewhere else. He yelled at the dog for chewing his socks, when he would have gladly fed Cheeks a thousand pairs for a feeling of security.
Jealous and stupid, he chided himself silently. He hoped he would get over it, because he was afraid to expose himself to Chris as the selfish jerk he really was. If she found out how tough this was for him, how much he hated that witch, Florence, how much he prayed Florence would somehow hit rock bottom, leaving Chris poor and needy again, she would leave him. She would have to. How could she stay with a man like that?
He tried to think of what he had instead of what he wanted, because he still had Chris in his bed at night, and through their intimacy an important part of his identity had returned to him. Sex with her was better than any sex he’d ever had because he loved her so deeply and wanted her so completely. Sometimes he felt surly and unaroused because of self-pity, but once it got rolling, it was fabulous. He tried not to imagine how good it would be if they had years to perfect it. They had already developed fun, lush games….
“Come on, smoky, put out this fire.”
“In a minute, in a minute.”
“Why do you wait so long?”
“I thought I was making you wait.”
“I already didn’t wait—twice.”
And…
“Hug me for a while. Just hug me like you’re not interested in sex.”
“Hug you until you beg me to move, huh?”
And…
“I’m not even going to take off my shirt until you tell me what you want. No, until you show me…”
Well, actually, those things had happened before Flo and the money. Since then he had felt inadequate, insecure. But if Flo and the money disappeared, he would be all right again. Virile. Even with his troubles, bed was still one of their best places these days. Because of the way their bodies worked together like an efficient factory that ran on its own energy. Once it got going and he forgot his anger, she didn’t ask him what was wrong and he didn’t sulk or worry. He wanted it to go on forever.
He was terrified. He thought he caught a glimpse of the end.
“Flo is coming in on the twenty-third, Mike. She promises to be good. Shall we do Christmas here? Should we take her to your mom and dad’s?” Chris had asked.
You can’t turn family away at Christmas. You can’t. Even if they’re awful family. But Flo at his mom and dad’s? “Let’s do it here. My folks can spare me one year.”
He didn’t ask her if she was going away after the holiday. He didn’t ask her if she was staying. She didn’t mention her plans. She didn’t ask him if his invitation remained open. Everything seemed to be moving out of reach. Except the money.
Chris had decided she had better not let her ex-husband get away with anything, for Carrie and Kyle’s sake. It had been their grandfather’s money. Flo could handle it. Chris didn’t need it, didn’t want it, but it could be put in trust for the kids, and some kind of dividend could be paid while they were growing up to help provide for them. They would never be poor again.
Mike had actually hoped he would be forced to take a second job to finance their college education. Like he had done for Tommy. Stupid thing to wish for, huh?
Chris didn’t need that money because she was going to sell books. She loved writing, she was going to start selling, and she had big plans. A career. A good, satisfying one.
One way or the other, Chris was going to be well-off. With or without him.
“Why don’t you and Chris and the kids come over for dinner?” Jim asked as they washed and dried the last pot.
“Yeah, maybe. There’s a lot to do with Christmas, though.”
“Yeah, I suppose. Is her aunt coming out here?”
He was slow to answer. “Yeah. Not till the twenty-third, though.”
“Little
Mike, take it easy. You’re not going to marry the aunt, you know.”
“Who said I was going to marry anyone?”
“Uh, Mike? Joanie wasn’t Catholic when you asked her to marry you, was she?”
“No. Why?”
“Did you tell her that was part of the deal, if you got married?”
“No. I wouldn’t do that. I just told her it would make things a lot easier if she would think about it.”
“Was it hard to ask her?”
He chuckled. “Yeah. Until I did. I guess I thought she’d get mad.”
“What’d she say?”
“You know what she said. She did it, right? She said that wasn’t too much to ask.”
“Try and remember that, huh?”
Remember what? To ask for what I need? If Chris finds out how much I need, it’ll scare her to death. Hell, it scares me to death. I cover up all my needs by filling the needs of others. I give a lot better than I receive.
Remember what? That people make changes in themselves in order to make a couple? I’m trying. I’m trying to change what I feel, but it hammers away inside me that I can’t give her as much as Aunt Flo can—as much as she already has, for that matter.
Remember what? That when you lose the one you love, the one you counted on, you lose a part of yourself? Believe me, I remember. That was why I stayed alone.
I remember.
The bell came in. Truck and engine and chief. Mike’s heart got a shot of adrenaline. He would only think about fire for a while now. Thank goodness.
Chris was scared to death of Christmas. Tomorrow Mike started his four days off over the holidays—quite a coup for a firefighter, to have so much time. In a couple of days Flo would return. If they could get through this, amicably, maybe they could get through the rest. She hoped. But Mike was so distant and quiet that she feared Flo’s presence combined with Mike’s cautiously suppressed anger was going to drive the last nail into the coffin.
The tree was up in the living room. It was bulging with presents, more presents than she had ever seen in her life. Every time the UPS truck pulled up with another load from Aunt Flo, Mike went out and bought more. There was no telling who would win this contest. Meanwhile the kids were having a time like they had never had. Mike, fortunately, did not seem to discriminate against them because they had wealth and Aunt Flo. His lap received them as dearly as ever.