Honey and Smoke (22 page)

His mouth touched hers, absorbing the words, and returning them. Tomorrow would arrive too soon. He prayed that she’d understand.

It was ridiculous to be this happy. She had no house, no furniture, and no more clothes than had been in a suitcase in the trunk of her mother’s car.

Betty sipped her orange juice and smiled at Max over breakfast. Sunshine filtered through the restaurant’s lace curtains; the dining room was warm with contentment. It would be an hour or more before Andy arrived for the day. Right now she and Max were the only ones in the house. They’d scrambled eggs and made pancakes in the big commercial kitchen, hardly a place she would have called romantic, but lovely when viewed through the afterglow of a tender, caring night.

He smiled back, though his face was lined with fatigue. His left hand was heavily bandaged; he gingerly rested it on the table. His eyes were shadowed by dark thoughts. He engaged in a one-handed battle with his pancakes. His weapons were a knife and a pat of butter.

“Would you like me to help?” she asked. “I could cut the pancakes up into small pieces for you.”

He chuckled dryly. “No way. Aunt Jemima and I refuse to wimp out.”

She looked at him pensively. “Your self-sufficiency is duly noted.”

“I may be down, but I’m not out.” His tone was sardonic. He jabbed his knife into the pancakes. “Care to hear any other clichés?”

Betty slowly set her glass of juice down. “Max, I want you to take back your investment in the barbecue sauce. We’ll work something else out. Well still be partners—”

“No. I’m not helpless. You need that money for the business. I Intend to carry my weight. You went through enough money problems with Sloan Richards. I don’t want to be compared to him.”

“It’s not even remotely the same situation,” she said with growing alarm. “Max, what’s the real issue here? Why are you talking like this?”

“I’m trying to do what’s best for you. Because I love you.”

His scowl sent a chill through her serenity. “You know, if two people love each other, sometimes one of them lets the other one carry the weight. They know that there’s nothing humiliating about it.” She fumbled with her napkin and carefully folded it into pleats. “It’s not as if I’m trying to hog-tie you with a set of purse strings.”

He tossed his knife down and pushed himself back from the table. He leveled a hard gaze at her. “I didn’t say that you were trying to manipulate me.”

“But you seem to be dead set against accepting more of my help.” Her heart was trapped in her throat. “Feeling a little too dependent on me after yesterday? I thought you enjoyed being loved and cared for. Was I wrong? Are you determined to make certain that I don’t get my hopes up about our future together?”

“We’re getting away from the subject. I’m talking about money.”

Dread stilled her. She hardly breathed. “No,” she whispered. “It’s something else. Why don’t you just get it over with? Tell me what we’re really talking about.”

“When you were in the shower this morning, I placed a call to Audubon. He wasn’t in, but hell return the call eventually.”

She clutched the edge of the table. “You’re not going to … you wouldn’t—”

“There’s a helluva lot of money to be made working for Audubon. And it’s not as if the work if selfish. Protecting people, getting them out of tight situations, perhaps even saving their lives—it’s honorable. I wouldn’t
feel that I was resigning as local magistrate without good reason.”

“You need … the money more than the glory.”

His expression hardened. He held her gaze with unblinking honesty. “Yes. But I’m not deserting you or this town. I’ll be back, I plan to build a new home here—a damned nice home.”

Trembling, she rose and planted her hands on the tabletop. Leaning toward him, her body rigid with control, she said softly, “I don’t think you’ll be back. I think this is an excuse to escape.”

“No, babe.” He stood also and grasped her by one arm. His anguished gaze told her he wasn’t happy about the pain that he was causing her. “I know that you can’t believe I’ll be back—”

“How long would this exercise in pride take?”

“I don’t know. It depends on the assignments that Audubon offers me. A few months, a year—”

“I won’t see you at all during that time?”

“Of course you’ll see me. I’ll be here every chance I get.”

“But Audubon gave me the impression that he’s very demanding.”

“He is. That’s why he’s worth working for. That’s also why he makes his offers so lucrative.”

“You’ll be in some far corner of the world most of the time.”

“Making the world a little better place, if I can,” he replied dully.

“You’ve been doing a good job of that here. With people who respect you and need you. People like the little boy, Christopher, at Halloween. People like the elderly couple who had a wonderful wedding because of your generosity.”
People like me
, she added silently.
Who will curl up and wither if you leave
.

“Think of it this way,” he told her, his voice strained. “I’ll have a lot of money to invest in our partnership.”

Her shoulders slumped. What could she do—repeat what she feared was the truth—that he was looking for
an excuse to put distance between her and himself? He’d only deny it. It was obvious that he hated hurting her like this.

“When do you expect to hear from Audubon?” she asked with forced nonchalance.

“I don’t know. I left the phone number for Norma’s place, because that’s where I’ll be.” He smiled thinly, his troubled gaze searching her face. “A minor delay interrupted my schedule yesterday. I have a backlog of weddings.”

She stared at him miserably and said nothing. His hand tightened on her arm. “Come here, babe.” But he was the one who moved, angling around the table and taking her deeply into his arms. She stood there in silent despair, clasping his waist with cold fingers, trying very hard to understand how love could mask such terrible surprises.

“It’s not what you think,” he whispered against her ear. “I love you. I’m not deserting you. Give me a chance to prove that.”

“I don’t have any choice.”

He held her obstinately, his uninjured hand caressing the small of her back; she clenched her hands into fists against his sides but let her head rest on his shoulder. Anger, confusion, and love were struggling inside her; she didn’t know which was dominant.

“Well talk about this a lot more,” he assured her in a gruff, unhappy voice.

“Later. Right now I … I have some thinking to do. And a restaurant to run. I know you have things to do too; people to see …” She stopped painfully, thinking.
And places to go
. Oh, yes. He was definitely going places.

They shared a tortured look. He shook his head. “Betty—”

“Please don’t. I’ll come by the wedding parlor tonight. Don’t say anything else right now.”

He swallowed roughly, his expression harsh with restraint,
and nodded. “I’m going over to the sheriffs office and borrow a car.”

“Take the Mercedes instead. I have my van out back.”

“Mercedes aren’t my style, babe.” He kissed her slowly. His eyes shut, he tilted his forehead against hers for a moment. “See you later.”

She watched him leave, then dropped into a chair. The future was now the present. It was empty.

The couple, Max’s last wedding for the night, appeared to be in their mid-twenties. She was a plump little sugar cookie with frightened eyes. He had the swagger of a Saturday-night hell-raiser but the smile of a shy Boy Scout. They’d inquired about a costume package, but had hastily declined when Norma mentioned that the costume weddings started at $59.95.

They stepped slowly and awkwardly up the aisle toward Max, trying to keep time with the ponderous wedding march that boomed from Norma’s organ. The groom wore a mud-brown polyester suit. The bride wore a dress of pink ruffles that emphasized every extra snack she’d ever eaten. They held hands and stared at May fixedly. He could almost hear their knees knocking in duet.

When Max glanced at Norma, she cut her eyes at the couple and shook her head. Doomed from the start, she was saying.

He silently agreed. But what the hell? He’d married lots of pairs who had looked this hopeless. The unhappiness they were contemplating wasn’t his problem. He had enough unhappiness to contemplate himself.

Max smoothed the long coat of his black marrying outfit, then clasped his hands in front of himself in his solemn marrying pose, the right hand cupped over the bulky mitten of bandages that covered the left. He was ready to begin his spiel. He forced himself to stop thinking about Betty.

Betty didn’t cooperate. One of the double doors opened
at the back of the room. She slipped inside, dressed in new sneakers, new jeans, a T-shirt, and a gray sweater, with her hair pulled back in a haphazard ponytail. She looked tired and bedraggled. He wanted to forget everything else and carry her off to their rented room.

She met his eyes with a fathomless gaze as she sat down in the back row. Aside from himself and Norma she was the couple’s only audience. Max tried to hide his anger. This was a pathetic atmosphere for a wedding. Where was the reverence, the joy, the excitement?

The back doors opened again. Audubon stepped into the room, looked around with amusement, then nodded to Betty—who straightened ominously. Audubon flicked an invisible bit of lint from the aviator’s jacket he wore with black trousers and a white sweater. He sat down across the aisle from Betty and glanced from her to Max with the hint of a frown.

Max cursed silently. Audubon hadn’t bothered to return the phone call; he’d flown down from Virginia to pursue a deal in person. He probably had an employment contract out in his limo, ready for Max’s signature. He didn’t take chances when he sensed victory close at hand.

Norma hit the last notes of the wedding march. The couple stopped abruptly, bumping against each other, still clenching each other’s hands. Max cleared his throat. He looked at the scrubbed, frightened faces of the young man and woman, who waited for his usual, meaningless crap about matrimony. He couldn’t make himself say it.

“Why are you here?” he demanded bluntly, scowling at them.

They jumped in unison. The groom turned red with embarrassment. “You think we shouldn’t be here, huh?”

“I don’t know. Why are you getting married?”

The bride began to sputter. “B-because we l-love each other—”

“That’s not enough,” Max told her. “You have to love each other in a certain way. You have to be willing to
love each other even when one of you is impossible to love. You have to be willing to take the other person’s pain as if it were your own. You have to want the other person’s happiness as much—if not more—than you want your own happiness.”

“We’ve got all that,” the groom said defensively.

“Tell me something. You two look like you haven’t got an extra dime between you. Is that any way to start a marriage? Have you got any place to live? Do you have decent jobs?”

“Stop it, Max,” Betty said brokenly. The couple swiveled around and stared at her. She stood up and looked at Max with tears in her eyes. Then she looked at the couple. “It doesn’t matter if you don’t have very much money, or a wonderful place to live, or decent jobs. If you really want to take care of each other for the rest of your lives, you can build a good life together.”

“I work at the gas station over on highway seven,” the groom told her. “And I just bought a double-wide trailer.”

Max shook his head. “But what if you lose your job? How will you make the trailer payments?”

“I’d get another job!”

The bride pivoted toward him and lifted her chin. “I can pay ’em. I work days at the Hamburger Barn and nights at the Laundromat.”

Betty applauded. “You two are going to be just fine.”

Max met her angry, sad gaze and held it firmly. He felt as if he were strangling inside.
Take the last step. It’s such a small one. See if she believes in your newfound faith
. “What if he wants to give her more than he’s capable of giving, and it makes him do things that hurt her?” Max asked.

The anger faded from her expression. “Are we still talking about money, or are we talking about loyalty, commitment, and promises built on faith?”

“We’re talking about money. The rest—he can give that, all of it, because he knows he’ll never stop loving her. She’s changed his attitude toward making promises,
you see. But maybe he’s worried that she won’t believe him, because he’s been so stubborn and confused in the past.”

Her hands rose slowly to her mouth. “Maybe she trusts the future more than the past. Maybe she trusts him in a way that she’s never trusted anyone else, because he’s always been honest about his feelings.”

The bride and groom looked at each other in bewilderment. “Huh?” the groom said.

At the back of the room Audubon leaned on the back of a chair, his chin propped on one hand. He looked disgruntled. “Sssh, children. We’re merely spectators.”

Max continued to hold Betty’s gaze. “He hasn’t always been honest. He let her think that he wanted to make money more than he wanted to stay with her. He thought the money would make her believe in him more.”

She moved slowly into the aisle, never looking away from him, her hands still raised to her lips in amazement. “He thought she’d be uncertain about his motives?”

Max nodded. “Would you say that he’s wrong?”

“Without a doubt.” She glided toward him as if floating on forces that didn’t require her conscious will. “Do you think he’ll stay with her?”

“Without a doubt.” Max stepped down from the platform. He held out his good hand. “Do you think she’ll believe him when he says he can look into the future and see himself as a husband and father?”

“Oh, she wants to believe that most of all.”

He met her halfway up the aisle. She took his hand and stepped closer to him! With the space of a whisper between them Max asked, “Do you think she’ll marry him?”

Her eyes glistened. She lifted his hand to her lips and kissed it. “At the very first opportunity.”

He pulled her into his arms and tucked her head against the crook of his neck. “Then they should definitely get married.”